Patent ID: 8533066

Claim:
A method of recommending a media program of a set of media programs to a user of a set of users, comprising: accepting, by a computing device, opinion data from the set of users, wherein the opinion data comprises a logical indication I u (i) of whether each individual user u of the set of users likes a first media program (i) and a logical indication I u (j) of whether each individual user u a second media program (j); generating, by the computing device, a measure w ij of an implied similarity of the first media program (i) and the second media program (j), comprising: computing, by the computing device, a first factor, the first factor being a first number of users having an indication I u (i, j) of liking the first media program and the second media program, wherein computing the first factor comprises: computing, by the computing device, a first sum, across the set of users, the first sum being a sum of the indication I u (i, j) that each individual user u of the set of users likes both the first media program (i) and the second media program (j); computing, by the computing device, a second factor, the second factor being a normalized product of a second number of users having an indication I u (i) liking the first media program and a third number of users having an indication I u (j) liking the second media program, wherein computing the second factor comprises: computing, by the computing device, a second sum, across the set of users, the second sum being a sum of the indication that each individual user u of the set of users likes the first media program (i); computing, by the computing device, a third sum, across the set of users, the third sum being a sum of the indication that each user of the set of users likes the second media program (j); and computing, by the computing device, the second factor as a root of a product of the second sum and the third sum; correcting, by the computing device, the first factor by a correction factor C(i,j) estimating a fourth number of times that the first media program (i) and the second media program (j) are both liked by an individual user u, yet unrelated, wherein correcting the first factor comprises: computing, by the computing device, the correction factor C(i,j), the correction factor C(i,j) estimating a number of times that the first media program (i) and the second media program (j) will both be liked by an individual user u, yet unrelated; and subtracting, by the computing device, the correction factor C(i,j) from the first factor; computing, by the computing device, the measure w ij from the corrected first factor and the second factor, wherein computing the measure w ij from the corrected first factor and the second factor comprises: computing, by the computing device, the measure as a ratio of the first factor to the second factor; and recommending, by the computing device, a media program to at least one of the set of users according to the measure w ij .