
Two Decades of Recommender Systems at Amazon.com - chwolfe
https://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/ic/2017/03/mic2017030012.html
======
aezell
20 years and they still think I need more than one vacuum.

ht:
[https://twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/724817086309142529](https://twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/724817086309142529)

~~~
dahdum
Reminds me of Netflix recommendations. They keep recommending I "continue
watching" the ~45 seconds of credits I missed from the last dozen shows I
watched. Most lists have movies/shows I've already seen at the top still.

I'm sure there's some reason behind it all, whether technological, user
behavior, or obscuring a small catalog. I wish I knew what it was.

~~~
bradjohnson
Or if I watch a couple episodes of a show and decide I don't like it and click
the "Stop recommending this show" button, it'll still show up in the "Continue
Watching" list. What's the point of the button?

~~~
Deimorz
You can go into your viewing activity (only available from your account page
on the desktop site, I think) and delete the show from there, and then it
should remove it from "Continue Watching".

It's not an obvious or straightforward thing to need to do, but seems to work.

~~~
NoCoastCoder
That's definitely available in the app as well.

------
mad44
I had read this paper, last week and took notes. Here is my summary of the
paper. It was a fun read. [http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2017/07/paper-
summary-two-d...](http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2017/07/paper-summary-two-
decades-of.html)

~~~
ernsheong
> initially I was worried I wouldn't understand or enjoy the article

Surprised to read this coming from an engineering professor. I guess we
mortals have more in common with professors than we think :) thanks for the
humility.

------
sundvor
20 years, and I still can't see a chronological listing of the other books in
a series when shopping for my Kindle.

------
bane
Sometimes it works surprisingly well, I think I remember a presentation where
somebody demonstrated that searching for components of a meth lab on amazon
would have amazon recommending to you other components to help you finish the
lab.

------
decafbad
I remember this one:
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/beyxJM_pM6jH8AKDU0ITxXn9W1...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/beyxJM_pM6jH8AKDU0ITxXn9W1KhJ4waSwJrRx59Lg1qzZql-
LPpZF3frXZzq7mbSs-
Wv11qOJhHZUSZdWiUH3wMkaLUvUgB9nBCujQcFYmvOBcMb-0vodY_R8BDaKJ72NvgJS9rr-
UlczwSjY7_V0zfQryz5z88o4CBNOCW6YPgkdwdp2wsVbbjFM47nTHMgGlCUFwLR5jLhAxsiWciVaepGrXl63yHNNtN6PNDJwzvg9RX3NiKWk6AzFD2OzCx-
euu7UH_KAEx8JfPtYtbUvCTeQ2NDxx6zEpc2dwZuFPmD_BD6VGBjrBHELd9PNwNXs3_alMi-
zIhPZo0Fk3w-K0JEmMsOFmpcFmj30b-T10zgQB9cxskexQBX1Ux-
zRlEHcLRq_7Y2O4IgHAx5uWD29fimIurQYvqfggFH7IvLkJI9BTvFc4-HVsKQY9Tt2lx7eRGy4bwHe2O6QcIyL3TWwcvGCKOhVerqdH02YfuRbd3NKX7bE1i-uLCzzgG6Poi0bsgj99tDlDxHX6Pvc_Wn3G7Mp9KzZiPzjXukMNGi0uqMqo3BE3FOKMmVb2nkN10GmRj5ngTrpk3c4mdXSf9DB6N_k5qn-u23MtAgWJjX0lTKQg1FkV2MGs=w573-h499-no)

Not very old.

------
npstr
I investigated different algorithms for recommendation systems once and was
astonished to find that the best one was also the most simple one: Jaccard
similarity. No other similarities nor a proprietary custom built algorithm
(which was the actual target of the investigation) could beat it.

~~~
DonaldFisk
This implies that you know all the relevant attributes of the items you're
recommending. For something like music, books, or movies, there might
literally be thousands of them, most of which are unidentifiable, any of which
might differ in importance from one item to another.

I built a collaborative filtering system
([http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/morse/MORSE.html](http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/morse/MORSE.html))
and didn't have to worry about who directed a film, when it was released,
where it was filmed, its budget, who starred in it, or what its genre or plot
elements were. All the relevant information was implicit in how the people who
saw it rated it out of ten.

~~~
scj
Thank you for the link, I intend on studying it carefully this weekend. I may
want to implement something similar using board game data from
boardgamegeek.com (I've already been working on a recommendation system). BGG
has a 1-10 point rating scale (using floating point numbers), so I suspect the
method described will fit.

My only concern is the number of mutually rated titles between users in board
gaming is probably lower than movies. Which I suspect will reduce confidence
rates.

The current approach (with a Jaccard system), requires a degree of human
intervention and only works on some users. It meets the goal of recommending
titles for me, but it'd be nice to expose the system externally.

------
fooker
Yep, I am definitely going to buy a $800 camera the day after I bought a
slightly better one!

------
firasd
Related: Deep Neural Networks for YouTube Recommendations
[https://research.google.com/pubs/pub45530.html](https://research.google.com/pubs/pub45530.html)
(Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12426064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12426064))

------
gcb0
anecdotal, but I've been their customer for all those years, and besides the
few books early on, absolutely one hundred percent of their recommendations
was utter useless.

------
Traubenfuchs
I bought some embedded system accessories two years ago for college and I am
still getting offered embedded system accessories.

Amazon's recommender system is garbage (for me).

------
losteverything
I use the amazon app to price match at another retailer.

The last scan or search always is somewhere in a recommendation (& one of my
game apps)

------
nn3
If you want to see a truly terrible recommendation system try aliexpress.

~~~
geomark
Indeed. But then I end up looking at things I would never have searched for.
Today I was looking for a UV sensor module and searched for "8511", a portion
of the part number for a commong one. First 4 results were UV sensors. Next
one was " Women Police Costume Uniform Secductive Role Play Sexy Lingerie Sex
Outfit Babydoll Fancy Halloween Costume Sexy Cop Outfit", followed by
"Synthetic Druzy Mineral Stone Double Flared Saddle Ear Gauge Wood Flesh
Tunnel Plug Piercing Body Jewelry Expanders". To be fair, I should have
included "uv sensor" in my search phrase. But then I would have missed that
cop outfit.

------
ekarulf
Just in the event someone out there is looking to work on these types of
problems, Amazon's Personalization teams are absolutely hiring.

Homepage: [https://www.amazon.jobs/en/teams/personalization-and-
recomme...](https://www.amazon.jobs/en/teams/personalization-and-
recommendations)

Applied Science:
[https://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/372996](https://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/372996)

Software Engineering:
[http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/549950](http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/549950)
[http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/402127](http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/402127)
[http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/430623](http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/430623)

Software Managers:
[http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/385902](http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/385902)
[http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/437405](http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/437405)
[http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/489879](http://www.amazon.jobs/jobs/489879)

If one of those don't strike your fancy but you are passionate about working
in this space, feel free to send me an email: ${HN_USERNAME}@amazon.com.

~~~
mabbo
Just think: all those things you can't stand the Amazon's recommendation
engine does, here's your chance to fix it for everyone.

~~~
johntb86
Given how long some of these problems have been going on, it may be a chance
to learn why it's not possible to fix them within their current organizational
structure.

~~~
cakedoggie
"Oh wow, so you have discovered that after someone buys something, and you
keep recommending the same thing, a large number of people go out of their way
to buy other stuff to remove the recommendation. So we actually make more
money recommending the last thing that they would want to buy?"

