Got it.  Thanks, Sean!

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Sean Owen <[email protected]> wrote:

> Well I think you could fit it inside some of the user-user similarities,
> yes. For a Pearson correlation, you could count important items twice or
> something, yes. I wouldn't do that by literally adding more items to the
> model as it creates other problems. It's possible; it may or may not have
> the type and magnitude of effect you're looking for but easy enough to try.
>
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Jamey Wood <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I think that's certainly true for item-based recommenders (and item-item
> > similarity).  But isn't it a different story for user-user similarity?
>  In
> > the example below, "novel1" and "novel1-copy" are indeed still separate
> > items--but won't they be separate items that produce duplicative forces
> > (and thus "weighting") in terms of the user-user similarity between user1
> > and user?
> >
> > I do realize that inflating the size of one's dataset in this way might
> > lead to other problems.  But setting that aside for now, I'd like to
> > understand whether or not it would produce this kind of weighting effect
> > for user-user similarities.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Jamey
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Sean Owen <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > I don't think that would quite help, since novel1 and its copy are then
> > > different items, and not somehow combining forces in the final
> > calculation.
> > >
> > > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 5:50 PM, Jamey Wood <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Thanks, Sean.  We'll look into that.
> > > >
> > > > For user-based recommenders (or even just calculating
> UserSimilarity),
> > > > would it have the desired effect if we added multiple "virtual"
> > > preference
> > > > data points for the "real" items that we wished to more heavily
> weight?
> > > >  For example, if our "real" preference data were:
> > > >
> > > >  user1:novel1:3star
> > > >  user1:story1:4star
> > > >  user2:novel1:1star
> > > >  user2:story1:3star
> > > >
> > > > Would transforming it into this have the desired weighting effect (as
> > > long
> > > > as we filtered out the "copy" items in any actual recommendations)?
> > > >
> > > >  user1:novel1:3star
> > > >  user1:novel1-copy1:3star
> > > >  user1:story1:4star
> > > >  user2:novel1:1star
> > > >  user2:novel1-copy1:1star
> > > >  user2:story1:3star
> > > >
> > > > The hope would be that "novel1" would now have twice the weighting as
> > > > "story1" in determining the similarity of these two users.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Jamey
> > > >
> > > > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Sean Owen <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Not directly, but you could modify an item-based recommender to do
> > so.
> > > > > Where it uses an item-item similarity as a weight in a weighted
> > > average,
> > > > > you could modify the weight however you like depending on the types
> > of
> > > > the
> > > > > two items.
> > > > >
> > > > > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 5:16 PM, Jamey Wood <[email protected]>
> > > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Is there some way to weight particular preferences within Mahout?
> > >  For
> > > > > > example, suppose you were creating some kind of literature
> > > recommender
> > > > > that
> > > > > > uses a 5-star preference scale.  If you wanted to give double the
> > > > > weighting
> > > > > > to preferences for novels versus preferences for short stories,
> > what
> > > > > would
> > > > > > be the best way to do it?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > > Jamey
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
>

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