Knowledge-based preference learning model for recommender system using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system

Abstract

A recommender system (RS) delivers personalized suggestions on products based on the interest of a particular user. Content-based filtering (CBF) and collaborative filtering (CF) schemes have been previously used for this task. However, the main challenge in RS is cold start problem (CSP). This originates once a new user joins the system which makes the recommendation task tedious due to the shortage of information (clickstream, dwell time, rating, etc.) regarding the user’s interest. Therefore, CBF and CF are combined together by developing a knowledge-based preference learning (KBPL) system. This system considers the demographic data that includes gender, occupation, and age for the recommendation task. Initially, the dataset is clustered using the self-organizing map (SOM) technique, then the high dimensional data is decomposed by higher-order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) and finally, Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) predicts the output. For the big dataset, SOM is a robust clustering method and the similarities among the users can be easily observed by grid clustering. The HOSVD extracts the required information from the available data set to find the user similarity by decomposing the dataset in lower dimensions. ANFIS uses IF-THEN rules to recommend similar product to the new users. The proposed KBPL system is evaluated with the Black Friday dataset and the obtained error value is compared with the existing CF and CBF techniques. The proposed KBPL system has obtained root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.71%, mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.54%, and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 37%. Overall, the outcome of the comparative analysis shows minimum error and better performance in terms of precision, recall, and f-measure for the proposed KBPL system compared to the existing techniques and therefore more suitable for accurately recommending the products for the new users.