Non-negative matrix factorization models based on a hierarchical
Gamma-Poisson structure capture user and item behavior effectively in extremely
sparse data sets, making them the ideal choice for collaborative filtering
applications. Hierarchical Poisson factorization (HPF) in particular has proved
successful for scalable recommendation systems with extreme sparsity. HPF,
however, suffers from a tight coupling of sparsity model (absence of a rating)
and response model (the value of the rating), which limits the expressiveness
of the latter. Here, we introduce hierarchical compound Poisson factorization
(HCPF) that has the favorable Gamma-Poisson structure and scalability of HPF to
high-dimensional extremely sparse matrices. More importantly, HCPF decouples
the sparsity model from the response model, allowing us to choose the most
suitable distribution for the response. HCPF can capture binary, non-negative
discrete, non-negative continuous, and zero-inflated continuous responses. We
compare HCPF with HPF on nine discrete and three continuous data sets and
conclude that HCPF captures the relationship between sparsity and response
better than HPF.Comment: Will appear on Proceedings of the 33 rd International Conference on
Machine Learning, New York, NY, USA, 2016. JMLR: W&CP volume 4