Patent ID: 8229798
Filing Date: 2012-07-24
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A system for estimating user ratings for one or more items, based on previous user rating activity, comprising: a processor; a memory for storing data and instructions for execution by the processor; a database hosted in the memory for storing rating information for a plurality of items and a plurality of users; a rating estimation module hosted as software stored in the memory and executable by the processor, the rating estimation module being operative to estimate a rating r wherein a set of user and item factors is precomputed and stored, and the rating estimation module retrieves user and item factors for a specific user and item in order to compute a rating for that user and item; and wherein each f and each f th item factor Q uf is iteratively precomputed as follows for each item i=1 . . . m wherein χ is a set of known ratings for users u and items i, and res ui is a residuals portion computed as follows for each know rating r ui : and adjusted as follows to provide shrinkage: wherein α is a constant and support ui is a support behind a rating r ui .