A fuzzy tree matching-based personalised e-learning recommender system

© 2014 IEEE. The rapid development of e-learning systems provides learners great opportunities to access the learning activities online, which greatly supports and enhances learning practices. However, too many learning activities are emerging in the e-learning system, which makes it difficult for learners to select proper ones for their particular situations since there is no personalised service function. Recommender systems, which aim to provide personalised recommendations, can be used to solve this issue. However, e-learning systems have two features to handle: (1) data of learners and leaning activities often present tree structures; (2) data are often vague and uncertain in practice. In this study, a fuzzy tree-structured data model is proposed to comprehensively describe the complex learning activities and learner profiles. A tree matching method is then developed to match the similar learning activities or learners. To deal with the uncertain category issues, a fuzzy category tree and relevant similarity measure are developed. A hybrid recommendation approach, which considers precedence relations between learning activities and combines the semantic and collaborative filtering similarities between learners, is developed. The proposed approach can handle the special requirements in e-learning environment and make proper recommendations in e-learning systems

Tree similarity measure-based recommender systems

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Science.The rapid growth of web information provides excellent opportunities for developing e-services in many applications but also caused increasingly severe information overload problems whereby users are not able to locate relevant information to exactly meet their needs efficiently by using the current Internet search functions. A personalised recommender system aims to handle this issue. A big challenge in current recommender system research is: the items and user profiles in many recommender system applications nowadays, such as the e-business and e-learning recommender systems, are so complex that they can only be described in complicated tree structures. Therefore, the item or user similarity measure, as the core technique of the recommendation approach, becomes a tree similarity measure, which existing recommender systems cannot provide. Another challenge is that in many real life situations, online recommendations to customers in selecting the most suitable products/services are often made under incomplete and uncertain information, which needs fuzzy set theory and techniques to deal with. Thus, how to use fuzzy set techniques to handle data uncertainty issues in tree-structured items or user profiles needs to be investigated. This research aims to handle these two challenges in both theoretical and practical aspects. It first defines a tree-structured data model, which can be used to model tree-structured items, user profiles and user preferences. A comprehensive similarity measure on tree-structured data considering all the information on tree structures, nodes’ concepts, weights and values is then developed, which can be used to compute the semantic similarity between tree-structured items or users, and the matching degree of items to tree-structured user requests. Based on the tree-structured data model, the tree-structured items and user requirements are modelled as item trees and user request trees respectively. An item tree and user request tree-based hybrid recommendation approach is then developed. To model users’ fuzzy tree-structured preferences, a fuzzy preference tree model is proposed. A fuzzy preference tree-based recommendation approach is then developed. Experimental results on an Australian business dataset and the Movielens dataset show that the proposed recommendation approaches have good performance and are well-suited in dealing with tree-structured data in recommender systems. By use of the proposed tree similarity measure and recommendation approaches based on that, two real world applications, a business partner recommender system, Smart BizSeeker, and an e-learning recommender system, ELRS, are designed and implemented, which demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approaches

Evaluation of Famous Recommender Systems: A Comparative Analysis

In this era of the internet and with the easy availability of data at a very low cost, searching for information is growing at an exponential rate. So, it is now impossible to find the desired information without proper guidance. Here is the need of the recommendation system. The system will recommend which information relevant to the user according to their searching pattern. It will also explore hidden results with a minimal effect. The goal of this paper is to describe the famous recommendation systems which are used mostly and to explore what is the need of these kinds of systems and also what kind of technology has been used to provide better services to its users. Finally we would like to show how one recommendation system is different from another as per user need

Strategies for online personalised nutrition advice employed in the development of the eNutri web app

The internet has considerable potential to improve health-related food choice at low-cost. Online solutions in this field can be deployed quickly and at very low cost, especially if they are not dependent on bespoke devices or offline processes such as the provision and analysis of biological samples. One key challenge is the automated delivery of personalised dietary advice in a replicable, scalable and inexpensive way, using valid nutrition assessment methods and effective recommendations. We have developed a web-based personalised nutrition system (eNutri) which assesses dietary intake using a validated graphical FFQ and provides personalised food-based dietary advice automatically. Its effectiveness was evaluated during an online randomised controlled trial dietary intervention (EatWellUK study) in which personalised dietary advice was compared with general population recommendations (control) delivered online. The present paper presents a review of literature relevant to this work, and describes the strategies used during the development of the eNutri app. Its design and source code have been made publicly available under a permissive open source license, so that other researchers and organisations can benefit from this work. In a context where personalised diet advice has great potential for health promotion and disease prevention at-scale and yet is not currently being offered in the most popular mobile apps, the strategies and approaches described in the present paper can help to inform and advance the design and development of technologies for personalised nutrition

Development of Context-Aware Recommenders of Sequences of Touristic Activities

En els últims anys, els sistemes de recomanació s'han fet omnipresents a la xarxa. Molts serveis web, inclosa la transmissió de pel·lícules, la cerca web i el comerç electrònic, utilitzen sistemes de recomanació per facilitar la presa de decisions. El turisme és una indústria molt representada a la xarxa. Hi ha diversos serveis web (e.g. TripAdvisor, Yelp) que es beneficien de la integració de sistemes recomanadors per ajudar els turistes a explorar destinacions turístiques. Això ha augmentat la investigació centrada en la millora dels recomanadors turístics per resoldre els principals problemes als quals s'enfronten. Aquesta tesi proposa nous algorismes per a sistemes recomanadors turístics que aprenen les preferències dels turistes a partir dels seus missatges a les xarxes socials per suggerir una seqüència d'activitats turístiques que s'ajustin a diversos contextes i incloguin activitats afins. Per aconseguir-ho, proposem mètodes per identificar els turistes a partir de les seves publicacions a Twitter, identificant les activitats experimentades en aquestes publicacions i perfilant turistes similars en funció dels seus interessos, informació contextual i períodes d'activitat. Aleshores, els perfils d'usuari es combinen amb un algorisme de mineria de regles d'associació per capturar relacions implícites entre els punts d'interès de cada perfil. Finalment, es fa un rànquing de regles i un procés de selecció d'un conjunt d'activitats recomanables. Es va avaluar la precisió de les recomanacions i l'efecte del perfil d'usuari. A més, ordenem el conjunt d'activitats mitjançant un algorisme multi-objectiu per enriquir l'experiència turística. També realitzem una segona fase d'anàlisi dels fluxos turístics a les destinacions que és beneficiós per a les organitzacions de gestió de destinacions, que volen entendre la mobilitat turística. En general, els mètodes i algorismes proposats en aquesta tesi es mostren útils en diversos aspectes dels sistemes de recomanació turística.En los últimos años, los sistemas de recomendación se han vuelto omnipresentes en la web. Muchos servicios web, incluida la transmisión de películas, la búsqueda en la web y el comercio electrónico, utilizan sistemas de recomendación para ayudar a la toma de decisiones. El turismo es una industria altament representada en la web. Hay varios servicios web (e.g. TripAdvisor, Yelp) que se benefician de la inclusión de sistemas recomendadores para ayudar a los turistas a explorar destinos turísticos. Esto ha aumentado la investigación centrada en mejorar los recomendadores turísticos y resolver los principales problemas a los que se enfrentan. Esta tesis propone nuevos algoritmos para sistemas recomendadores turísticos que aprenden las preferencias de los turistas a partir de sus mensajes en redes sociales para sugerir una secuencia de actividades turísticas que se alinean con diversos contextos e incluyen actividades afines. Para lograr esto, proponemos métodos para identificar a los turistas a partir de sus publicaciones en Twitter, identificar las actividades experimentadas en estas publicaciones y perfilar turistas similares en función de sus intereses, contexto información y periodos de actividad. Luego, los perfiles de usuario se combinan con un algoritmo de minería de reglas de asociación para capturar relaciones entre los puntos de interés que aparecen en cada perfil. Finalmente, un proceso de clasificación de reglas y selección de actividades produce un conjunto de actividades recomendables. Se evaluó la precisión de las recomendaciones y el efecto de la elaboración de perfiles de usuario. Ordenamos además el conjunto de actividades utilizando un algoritmo multi-objetivo para enriquecer la experiencia turística. También llevamos a cabo un análisis de los flujos turísticos en los destinos, lo que es beneficioso para las organizaciones de gestión de destinos, que buscan entender la movilidad turística. En general, los métodos y algoritmos propuestos en esta tesis se muestran útiles en varios aspectos de los sistemas de recomendación turística.In recent years, recommender systems have become ubiquitous on the web. Many web services, including movie streaming, web search and e-commerce, use recommender systems to aid human decision-making. Tourism is one industry that is highly represented on the web. There are several web services (e.g. TripAdvisor, Yelp) that benefit from integrating recommender systems to aid tourists in exploring tourism destinations. This has increased research focused on improving tourism recommender systems and solving the main issues they face. This thesis proposes new algorithms for tourism recommender systems that learn tourist preferences from their social media data to suggest a sequence of touristic activities that align with various contexts and include affine activities. To accomplish this, we propose methods for identifying tourists from their frequent Twitter posts, identifying the activities experienced in these posts, and profiling similar tourists based on their interests, contextual information, and activity periods. User profiles are then combined with an association rule mining algorithm for capturing implicit relationships between points of interest apparent in each profile. Finally, a rule ranking and activity selection process produces a set of recommendable activities. The recommendations were evaluated for accuracy and the effect of user profiling. We further order the set of activities using a multi-objective algorithm to enrich the tourist experience. We also carry out a second-stage analysis of tourist flows at destinations which is beneficial to destination management organisations seeking to understand tourist mobility. Overall, the methods and algorithms proposed in this thesis are shown to be useful in various aspects of tourism recommender systems

Benchmarking data mining approaches for traveler segmentation

The purpose of this study is proposing a hybrid data mining solution for traveler segmentation in tourism domain which can be used for planning user-oriented trips, arranging travel campaigns or similar services. Data set used in this work have been provided by a travel agency which contains flight and hotel bookings of travelers. Initially, the data set was prepared for running data mining algorithms. Then, various machine learning algorithms were benchmarked for performing accurate traveler segmentation and prediction tasks. Fuzzy C-means and X-means algorithms were applied for clustering user data. J48 and multilayer perceptron (MLP) algorithms were applied for classifying instances based on segmented user data. According to the findings of this study, J48 has the most effective classification results when applied on the data set which is clustered with X-means algorithm. The proposed hybrid data mining solution can be used by travel agencies to plan trip campaigns for similar travelers