2009/2/13 PJ Fitzpatrick <[email protected]>: > Hi, > > You mention a very critical point about the network. I worked on the launch > of an online exchange many years back and a lot of the success has to do > with how many users you get. However i'm also of the opinion that the actual > matching algorithmn can have a critical bearing on the success as well.
I'm closer to the data-centric viewpoint myself, as expressed by Anand Rajaraman http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/03/more-data-usual.html > For example assume you can only match with someone who is the exact opposite > to yourself. I have A and want B and you have B and want A. To find matches > you then need a lot of users. If however you widen it out to allow say 3 > people to match then you could have a match created if the following occurs. > -I have A and want B > -Another user has B and wants C > -Yet another user has C and wants A > > So by allowing these higher order matches you get a much better chance of > matches actually happening for a smaller number of participants. In my local > barter website i have taken this to the extreme that i have no limit on the > number of people that can be matched in such a chain. All i do is, at some > fixed interval(currently expected to be weekly), i take all the orders and > try to come up with the matches that maximises (or attempts to maximise as > it is unlikley i would get the global maximum) the amount of business done > on the exchange. Of course things becomes impractical if the number of users > is very high but as i said it is a local barter website. If I understand correctly, this algorithm tests an element of a set not just with other elements but with all subsets of elements in the set which it isn't in? I understand the reasoning, but the the number of tests for a set of N elements is 2^(N-1)-1. Yikes. > Anyway one of the reasons i posted this in the first place was to see what > people though and to see is some other people would be interested in > participating in an Open Source Project on it. I remember a while back there > was talk of some project in the Python Ireland group. I would certainly be interested in helping to develop a project aimed at creating a knowledge base like this, though I don't know how much effort I could commit to. Of course the first problem such a site would face is deciding which stack to use :P > Also a similar concept could be applied to books. I already have got the > domain www.ihavereadthebook.com. Amazon allow third party use of their recommendation engine. You might want to have a look at that if/when your book project kicks off. -- steev http://www.daikaiju.org.uk/~steve/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Python Ireland" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.ie/group/pythonireland?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
