A new recommendation algorithm combined with spectral clustering and transfer learning

Collaborative filtering (CF) recommendation algorithm has been successfully applied into recommender systems for years which can solve the problem of information overload. However, CF suffers from data sparsity and knowledge cannot transfer between multiple rating matrixes. In this paper, we propose a collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm combined with spectral clustering and transfer learning (RASCTL). RASCTL firstly uses spectral clustering to cluster the dimensions of users and items in the original rating matrix. In addition, RASCTL decomposes the rating matrix after clustering and gets the sharing group rating matrix. Finally, RASCTL makes rating forecasting and recommendations combined with the sharing group rating matrix and transfer learning. By the simulation experiments on Epinions and MovieLents data sets, the results show that RASCTL is able to obtain comparable or even better recommendation accuracy and generalization ability compared with other seven CF recommendation algorithms.