Introduction
In the digital age, we are swamped with recommendations from the movies we watch to the products we buy online; recommendation systems play a pivotal role in shaping our choices. These systems, often powered by sophisticated algorithms, make suggestions based on our past behavior and preferences. However, a persistent challenge lurks beneath the surface: the "cold start problem."
The cold start problem can be summarized as the dilemma that recommendation algorithms face when dealing with users or items with little to no historical data. It is like trying to predict a friend's food preference when you have just met them. How can you recommend a product when you lack data on a particular item's popularity and user interactions?
There are two primary causes of the cold start problem:
1. User Cold Start: This occurs when a new user joins the system, and the system has no or minimal information about their preferences and behavior. Consequently, it is challenging to offer personalized recommendations.
2. Item Cold Start: Conversely, an item cold start problem arises when a new product or item is added to the system, and there is limited or no user engagement data. Without user feedback, gauging the item's popularity or who it might appeal to is tough.
In the following sections, we will explore the challenges posed by the cold start problem and delve into matrix factorization technique that can be employed to tackle this formidable obstacle in collaborative recommender systems.
Collaborative Recommender Systems
Collaborative recommender systems use a user-item interaction matrix for recommending items to users. A user-item interaction matrix includes all the ratings given by users to items. As shown in the figure above, a user–movie rating matrix comprises ratings given by users for different movies. However, the user-item matrix can be very sparse when viewed from a cold start viewpoint (i.e., a new user would not have rated any items, a novel item would not be rated by any user), and users would not have rated all the items they consumed. To resolve this situation, we can use matrix factorization, which helps fill the missing values in our user-item interaction matrix, consequently helping provide better and personalized item recommendations to users.
Matrix Factorization
Matrix factorization decomposes the user-item interaction matrix into two smaller matrices: a user matrix (U) and an item matrix (V). The user matrix contains rows corresponding to users, and each row represents a user's association with latent factors. Similarly, the item matrix includes columns corresponding to items, each representing an item's association with the same set of latent factors. As shown in the figure above, the user-movie matrix R can be derived from the dot product of two matrices: user matrix U and movies matrix V.
The user and item matrices are multiplied to reconstruct an estimated user-item interaction matrix. This estimated matrix approximates the original user-item interactions, where each entry in the matrix represents the predicted user rating.
During the training process, algorithms such as stochastic gradient descent are used to learn the values of the latent factors for each user and item that minimize the difference between the estimated and actual user-item interaction values in the training data. The latent factors do not have clear and interpretable meanings as the model learns them. However, they capture underlying patterns or characteristics that influence user-item interactions. For example, latent factors in a movie recommendation system might represent aspects like genre preferences, director styles, or actor appeal.
Results
Once we have the final predicted user-item interaction matrix, the missing values in the original user-item interaction matrix now have predicted values/ratings. The predicted matrix solves our cold start problem. Here, we have predicted ratings for all the items every user in the matrix presents. The recommendations provided to the user can now be more personalized.
The predicted matrix can be used as an input to collaborative recommender systems for generating better and personalized recommendations of items to customers.
Business Impact
Resolving the cold start problem would positively impact the customer experience, which would impact the business.
E.g., an online shopping platform has numerous customers added daily to their customer base along with multiple latest items added to their collection by sellers. As the new customers would not have rated any item, similarly, no user would have rated the latest items, posing a classic cold start problem. Applying matrix factorization in the above scenario can help us get some predicted ratings for the items by customers, which can be consumed by recommender system applications for generating better and unique item/product recommendations for every customer.
Given below are the impacts of providing good recommendations:-
- Personalized recommendations ensure that customer satisfaction scores and the probability of customer retention go up.
- Providing recommendations outside popular items breaks the monotonicity; customers get new/uncommon item recommendations.
- From the business’s perspective, proper recommendations ensure that even an unpopular/latest item can be recommended to customers, helping to gain market traction/penetration for the said item.
- Increased customer retention would increase the revenue generated and profit margins and reduce the cost of marketing campaigns to retain customers.
AUTHOR - FOLLOW
Gursharan Singh
Consultant
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