Recommendation Engines

By: Sorab Ghaswalla

A tool that’s quietly crept into almost all parts of our lives is a recommendation engine. When we go shopping online or turn on an OTT service, a recommender system is always at hand, easing our job of deciding what next.

For this newsletter, and in keeping with its goal, we shall limit ourselves to talking only about those recommendation engines that use content-based filtering. This kind uses inputs by an individual user or consumer ONLY.

What are recommendation engines?

It’s simple, really. It’s software that tasked to think on your behalf, take the pain of decision-making away, and to throw up “intelligent” offerings based on a user/customer’s past history. Basically, some claim it’s yet another way of making humans lazy, for it allows a machine to do the job of sifting/browsing.

Does it? In today’s world where content has grown manifold, it is impossible for a human to go through those catalogs or lists or reviews to decide which movie to watch next, which book to read or which shoe to buy.

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