rank-aware clustering of structured datasets
In online applications such as Yahoo! Personals and Yahoo! Real Estate users define structured profiles in order to find potentially interesting matches. Typically, profiles are evaluated against large datasets and produce thousands of matches. In addition to filtering, users also specify ranking in their profile, and matches are returned in a ranked list. Top results in a list are typically homogeneous, which hinders data exploration. For example, a user looking for 1- or 2-bedroom apartments sorted by price will see a large number of cheap 1-bedrooms in undesirable neighborhoods before seeing a different apartment. An alternative to ranking is to group matches on common attribute values, e.g., cheap 1-bedrooms in good neighborhoods, 2-bedrooms with 2 baths, and choose groups in relationship with ranking. In this paper, we present a novel paradigm of rank-aware clustering, and demonstrate its effectiveness on a large dataset from Yahoo! Personals, a leading online dating site.
rank-aware clustering structured datasets information presentation information filtering