4,123 research outputs found
BPRS: Belief Propagation Based Iterative Recommender System
In this paper we introduce the first application of the Belief Propagation
(BP) algorithm in the design of recommender systems. We formulate the
recommendation problem as an inference problem and aim to compute the marginal
probability distributions of the variables which represent the ratings to be
predicted. However, computing these marginal probability functions is
computationally prohibitive for large-scale systems. Therefore, we utilize the
BP algorithm to efficiently compute these functions. Recommendations for each
active user are then iteratively computed by probabilistic message passing. As
opposed to the previous recommender algorithms, BPRS does not require solving
the recommendation problem for all the users if it wishes to update the
recommendations for only a single active. Further, BPRS computes the
recommendations for each user with linear complexity and without requiring a
training period. Via computer simulations (using the 100K MovieLens dataset),
we verify that BPRS iteratively reduces the error in the predicted ratings of
the users until it converges. Finally, we confirm that BPRS is comparable to
the state of art methods such as Correlation-based neighborhood model (CorNgbr)
and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) in terms of rating and precision
accuracy. Therefore, we believe that the BP-based recommendation algorithm is a
new promising approach which offers a significant advantage on scalability
while providing competitive accuracy for the recommender systems
Flow-based reputation with uncertainty: Evidence-Based Subjective Logic
The concept of reputation is widely used as a measure of trustworthiness
based on ratings from members in a community. The adoption of reputation
systems, however, relies on their ability to capture the actual trustworthiness
of a target. Several reputation models for aggregating trust information have
been proposed in the literature. The choice of model has an impact on the
reliability of the aggregated trust information as well as on the procedure
used to compute reputations. Two prominent models are flow-based reputation
(e.g., EigenTrust, PageRank) and Subjective Logic based reputation. Flow-based
models provide an automated method to aggregate trust information, but they are
not able to express the level of uncertainty in the information. In contrast,
Subjective Logic extends probabilistic models with an explicit notion of
uncertainty, but the calculation of reputation depends on the structure of the
trust network and often requires information to be discarded. These are severe
drawbacks.
In this work, we observe that the `opinion discounting' operation in
Subjective Logic has a number of basic problems. We resolve these problems by
providing a new discounting operator that describes the flow of evidence from
one party to another. The adoption of our discounting rule results in a
consistent Subjective Logic algebra that is entirely based on the handling of
evidence. We show that the new algebra enables the construction of an automated
reputation assessment procedure for arbitrary trust networks, where the
calculation no longer depends on the structure of the network, and does not
need to throw away any information. Thus, we obtain the best of both worlds:
flow-based reputation and consistent handling of uncertainties
Recommender Systems
The ongoing rapid expansion of the Internet greatly increases the necessity
of effective recommender systems for filtering the abundant information.
Extensive research for recommender systems is conducted by a broad range of
communities including social and computer scientists, physicists, and
interdisciplinary researchers. Despite substantial theoretical and practical
achievements, unification and comparison of different approaches are lacking,
which impedes further advances. In this article, we review recent developments
in recommender systems and discuss the major challenges. We compare and
evaluate available algorithms and examine their roles in the future
developments. In addition to algorithms, physical aspects are described to
illustrate macroscopic behavior of recommender systems. Potential impacts and
future directions are discussed. We emphasize that recommendation has a great
scientific depth and combines diverse research fields which makes it of
interests for physicists as well as interdisciplinary researchers.Comment: 97 pages, 20 figures (To appear in Physics Reports
Similarity-based Techniques for Trust Management
A network of people having established trust relations and a model for propagation of related trust scores are fundamental building blocks in many of todayĹ s most successful e-commerce and recommendation systems. Many online communities are only successful if sufficient mu-tual trust between their members exists. Users want to know whom to trust and how muc
Quality of Information in Mobile Crowdsensing: Survey and Research Challenges
Smartphones have become the most pervasive devices in people's lives, and are
clearly transforming the way we live and perceive technology. Today's
smartphones benefit from almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity and come
equipped with a plethora of inexpensive yet powerful embedded sensors, such as
accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, and camera. This unique combination has
enabled revolutionary applications based on the mobile crowdsensing paradigm,
such as real-time road traffic monitoring, air and noise pollution, crime
control, and wildlife monitoring, just to name a few. Differently from prior
sensing paradigms, humans are now the primary actors of the sensing process,
since they become fundamental in retrieving reliable and up-to-date information
about the event being monitored. As humans may behave unreliably or
maliciously, assessing and guaranteeing Quality of Information (QoI) becomes
more important than ever. In this paper, we provide a new framework for
defining and enforcing the QoI in mobile crowdsensing, and analyze in depth the
current state-of-the-art on the topic. We also outline novel research
challenges, along with possible directions of future work.Comment: To appear in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN
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