Data-driven decision making in Critique-based recommenders: from a critique to social media data

In the last decade there have been a large number of proposals in the field of Critique-based Recommenders. Critique-based recommenders are data-driven in their nature sincethey use a conversational cyclical recommendation process to elicit user feedback. In theliterature, the proposals made differ mainly in two aspects: in the source of data and in howthis data is analyzed to extract knowledge for providing users with recommendations. Inthis paper, we propose new algorithms that address these two aspects. Firstly, we propose anew algorithm, called HOR, which integrates several data sources, such as current user pref-erences (i.e., a critique), product descriptions, previous critiquing sessions by other users,and users' opinions expressed as ratings on social media web sites. Secondly, we propose adding compatibility and weighting scores to turn user behavior into knowledge to HOR and a previous state-of-the-art approach named HGR to help both algorithms make smarter recommendations. We have evaluated our proposals in two ways: with a simulator and withreal users. A comparison of our proposals with state-of-the-art approaches shows that thenew recommendation algorithms significantly outperform previous ones

A Cognitively Inspired Clustering Approach for Critique-Based Recommenders

The purpose of recommender systems is to support humans in the purchasing decision-making process. Decision-making is a human activity based on cognitive information. In the field of recommender systems, critiquing has been widely applied as an effective approach for obtaining users' feedback on recommended products. In the last decade, there have been a large number of proposals in the field of critique-based recommenders. These proposals mainly differ in two aspects: in the source of data and in how it is mined to provide the user with recommendations. To date, no approach has mined data using an adaptive clustering algorithm to increase the recommender's performance. In this paper, we describe how we added a clustering process to a critique-based recommender, thereby adapting the recommendation process and how we defined a cognitive user preference model based on the preferences (i.e., defined by critiques) received by the user. We have developed several proposals based on clustering, whose acronyms are MCP, CUM, CUM-I, and HGR-CUM-I. We compare our proposals with two well-known state-of-the-art approaches: incremental critiquing (IC) and history-guided recommendation (HGR). The results of our experiments showed that using clustering in a critique-based recommender leads to an improvement in their recommendation efficiency, since all the proposals outperform the baseline IC algorithm. Moreover, the performance of the best proposal, HGR-CUM-I, is significantly superior to both the IC and HGR algorithms. Our results indicate that introducing clustering into the critique-based recommender is an appealing option since it enhances overall efficiency, especially with a large data set

Comparing distributional semantic models for identifying groups of semantically related words

Distributional Semantic Models (DSM) are growing in popularity in Computational Linguistics. DSM use corpora of language use to automatically induce formal representations of word meaning. This article focuses on one of the applications of DSM: identifying groups of semantically related words. We compare two models for obtaining formal representations: a well known approach (CLUTO) and a more recently introduced one (Word2Vec). We compare the two models with respect to the PoS coherence and the semantic relatedness of the words within the obtained groups. We also proposed a way to improve the results obtained by Word2Vec through corpus preprocessing. The results show that: a) CLUTO outperformsWord2Vec in both criteria for corpora of medium size; b) The preprocessing largely improves the results for Word2Vec with respect to both criteria

Machining tool identification utilizing temporal 3D point clouds

The manufacturing domain is regarded as one of the most important engineering areas. Recently, smart manufacturing merges the use of sensors, intelligent controls, and software to manage each stage in the manufacturing lifecycle. Additionally, the increasing use of point clouds to model real products and machining tools in a virtual space facilitates the more accurate monitoring of the end-to-end production lifecycle. Thus, the conjunction of both, intelligent methods and more accurate 3D models allows the prediction of uncertainties and anomalies in the manufacturing process as well as reduces the final production costs. However, the high complexity of the geometrical structures defined by point clouds and the high accuracy required by the Quality Assurance/Quality control parameters during the process, pave the way for continuous improvements in smart manufacturing methods. This paper addresses a comprehensive analysis of machining tool identification utilizing temporal point cloud data. Specifically, we deal with the identification of machining tools from temporal 3D point clouds. To do that, we propose a process to construct and train intelligent models utilizing such data. Moreover, in our case study, we provide the research community with two labeled temporal 3D point cloud datasets, and we experiment with the pioneering PointNet neural network and three of its variants demonstrating an accuracy of 95% in the identification of the utilized machining tools in a machining process. Finally, we provide a prototype end-to-end intelligent system of machining tool identification

Polarity analisys od reviews based on the omission of asymetric sentences

In this paper, we present a novel approach to polarity analysis of product reviews which detects and removes sentences with the opposite polarity to that of the entire document (asymmetric sentences) as a previous step to identify positive and negative reviews. We postulate that asymmetric sentences are morpho-syntactically more complex than symmetric ones (sentences with the same polarity to that of the entire document) and that it is possible to improve the detection of the polarity orientation of reviews by removing asymmetric sentences from the text. To validate this hypothesis, we measured the syntactic complexity of both types of sentences in a multi-domain corpus of product reviews and contrasted three relevant data configurations based on inclusion and omission of asymmetric sentences from the reviews

A hybrid multi-start metaheuristic scheduler for astronomical observations

In this paper, we investigate Astronomical Observations Scheduling which is a type of Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problem, and detail its specific challenges and requirements and propose the Hybrid Accumulative Planner (HAP), a hybrid multi-start metaheuristic scheduler able to adapt to the different variations and demands of the problem. To illustrate the capabilities of the proposal in a real-world scenario, HAP is tested on the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (Ariel) mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), and compared with other studies on this subject including an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) approach. The results show that the proposal outperforms the other methods in the evaluation and achieves better scientific goals than its peers. The consistency of HAP in obtaining better results on the available datasets for Ariel, with various sizes and constraints, demonstrates its competence in scalability and adaptability to different conditions of the problem.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

DISCOver: DIStributional approach based on syntactic dependencies for discovering COnstructions

One of the goals in Cognitive Linguistics is the automatic identification and analysis of constructions, since they are fundamental linguistic units for understanding language. This article presents DISCOver, an unsupervised methodology for the automatic discovery of lexico-syntactic patterns that can be considered as candidates for constructions. This methodology follows a distributional semantic approach. Concretely, it is based on our proposed pattern-construction hypothesis: those contexts that are relevant to the definition of a cluster of semantically related words tend to be (part of) lexico-syntactic constructions. Our proposal uses Distributional Semantic Models for modelling the context taking into account syntactic dependencies. After a clustering process, we linked all those clusters with strong relationships and we use them as a source of information for deriving lexico-syntactic patterns, obtaining a total number of 220,732 candidates from a 100 million token corpus of Spanish. We evaluated the patterns obtained intrinsically, applying statistical association measures and they were also evaluated qualitatively by experts. Our results were superior to the baseline in both quality and quantity in all cases. While our experiments have been carried out using a Spanish corpus, this methodology is language independent and only requires a large corpus annotated with the parts of speech and dependencies to be applied

A 3D Visual Interface for Critiquing-based Recommenders: Architecture and Interaction

Nowadays e-commerce websites offer users such a huge amount of products, which far from facilitating the buying process, actually make it more difficult. Hence, recommenders, which learn from users' preferences, are consolidating as valuable instruments to enhance the buying process in the 2D Web. Indeed, 3D virtual environments are an alternative interface for recommenders. They provide the user with an immersive 3D social experience, enabling a richer visualisation and increasing the interaction possibilities with other users and with the recommender. In this paper, we focus on a novel framework to tightly integrate interactive recommendation systems in a 3D virtual environment. Specifically, we propose to integrate a Collaborative Conversational Recommender (CCR) in a 3D social virtual world. Our CCR Framework defines three layers: the user interaction layer (3D Collaborative Space Client), the communication layer (3D Collaborative Space Server), and the recommendation layer (Collaborative Conversational Recommender). Additionally, we evaluate the framework based on several usability criteria such as learnability, perceived efficiency and effectiveness. Results demonstrate that users positively valued the experience

Función de las secuencias narrativas en la clasificación de la polaridad de reviews

[eng] Reviews are a powerful source of information about consumer preferences that can be used in personalization systems. In this paper we analyse the role played by narrative chains in determining the polarity of reviews. For this purpose, we applied an algorithm to remove sentences containing events semantically connected. We report experiments designed to evaluate the impact that the omission of those sentences has in determining the polarity of reviews. The results show that negative opinions are often expressed in terms of narrative chains while positive opinions are independent of narratives. [spa] Los comentarios sobre productos o reviews son una fuente valiosa de información para entender las preferencias de los usuarios en los sistemas para la personalización de contenidos. En este artículo se analiza la función que desempeñan las secuencias narrativas en el cálculo de la polaridad de productos. Con esta finalidad hemos aplicado un algoritmo para extraer las oraciones que contienen eventos relacionados semánticamente y hemos realizado una serie de experimentos orientados a determinar el impacto que la omisión de dichas oraciones puede tener a nivel de la polaridad de los reviews. Los resultados obtenidos demuestran que las opiniones negativas de los productos se suelen expresar mediante secuencias narrativas mientras que las positivas son independientes de la narración

Introducción a la programación en el ámbito de diversas ingenierías

La asignatura de programación constituye una base fundamental para las diversas carreras de ingeniería. Los posibles enfoques que se pueden utilizar, tanto de contenidos como de método docente, son muy diversos. En este artículo presentamos la solución adoptada en Enginyeria i Arquitectura la Salle (Universitat Ramon Llull). En este contexto la asignatura es común a los diversos planes de estudios que se imparten: Ingeniería de Informática, Ingeniería de Telecomunicaciones y Graduado en Multimedia. Por este motivo la asignatura es producto de un compromiso entre las diversas necesidades de cada carrera. La solución que aquí planteamos se ha venido utilizando en los últimos años con resultados plenamente satisfactorios