Data Science Programming All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 1

Making Recommendations

IN THIS CHAPTER

Defining why recommenders are important

Obtaining rating data

Working with behaviors

Using SVD to your advantage

One of the oldest and most common sales techniques is to recommend something to a customer based on what you know about the customer’s needs and wants. If people buy one product, they might buy another associated product if given a good reason to do so. They may not even have thought about the need for the second product until the salesperson recommends it, yet they really do need it to use the primary product. For this reason alone, most people actually like to get recommendations. Given that web pages now serve as a salesperson in many cases, recommender systems are a necessary part of any serious sales effort on the web. This chapter helps you better understand the significance of the recommender revolution in all sorts of venues.

Recommender systems serve all sorts of other needs. For example, you might see an interesting movie title, read the synopsis, and still not know whether you’re likely to find it a good movie. ...