Spring 2011 Seminar Series

DATE: February 10th
LOCATION: E51-345
TIME: 4:15pm
Reception immediately following in the ORC Conference Room, E40-106

SPEAKER:
Ben Van Roy

TITLE
Manipulation Robustness of Collaborative Filtering

ABSTRACT
A collaborative filtering system recommends to users products that similar users like. Collaborative filtering systems influence purchase decisions, and hence have become targets of manipulation by unscrupulous vendors. We demonstrate that nearest neighbors algorithms, which have been widely used in commercial systems, are highly susceptible to manipulation and introduce new collaborative filtering algorithms that are relatively robust.