The collaborative filtering recommendation based on SOM cluster-indexing CBR

Collaborative filtering (CF) recommendation is a knowledge sharing technology for distribution of opinions and facilitating contacts in network society between people with similar interests. The main concerns of the CIF algorithm are about prediction accuracy, speed of response time, problem of data sparsity, and scalability. In general, the efforts of improving prediction algorithms and lessening response time are decoupled. We propose a three-step CIF recommendation model, which is composed of profiling, inferring, and predicting steps while considering prediction accuracy and computing speed simultaneously. This model combines a CF algorithm with two machine learning processes, Self-Organizing Map (SOM) and Case Based Reasoning (CBR) by changing an unsupervized clustering problem into a supervized user preference reasoning problem, which is a novel approach for the CF recommendation field. This paper demonstrates the utility of the CF recommendation based on SOM cluster-indexing CBR with validation against control algorithms through an open dataset of user preference. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.