Got it, so do I have it right that you suggest defining the
"correlation" as really the chi-squared statistic, the -2 log lamba
formula? k1 is the number of items 'preferred' by user 1, and n1 is
the total number of items in the universe, and likewise for k2/n2? so
n1 == n2?

Simple is cool with me, to start. This sounds more sophisticated than
a simple intersection/union approach. I could add that algorithm too
for kicks.

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 12:58 PM, Ted Dunning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Correlation (per se) between such sparse binary vectors can be very
> problematic.
>
> This is a general problem with this kind of data and really needs to be
> handled directly.  Not clicking on an item is much less informative than
> clicking on an item (so little time, so much to click).  Any system you
> build has to deal with that and with coincidence.  For instance, raw
> correlation gives 100% match for two people who happen to have clicked on
> the same single item.  IF that item is a very popular one, however, this is
> not a very interesting fact.
>
> One very simple way of dealing with this was described in
> http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/29096.html .  Since then, I have found other,
> more comprehensive techniques but they are considerably more complex.

Reply via email to