Machine Learning Methods for Ranking

Learning-to-rank is one of the learning frameworks in machine learning and it aims to organize the objects in a particular order according to their preference, relevance or ranking. In this paper, we give a comprehensive survey for learning-to-rank. First, we discuss the different approaches along with different machine learning methods such as regression, SVM, neural network-based, evolutionary, boosting method. In order to compare different approaches: we discuss the characteristics of each approach. In addition to that, learning-to-rank algorithms combine with other machine learning paradigms such as semi-supervised learning, active learning, reinforcement learning and deep learning. The learning-to-rank models employ with parallel or big data analytics to review computational and storage advantage. Many real-time applications use learning-to-rank for preference learning. In regard to this, we introduce some representative works. Finally, we highlighted future directions to investigate learning-to-rank methods.