Introduction to Recommender Systems

Recommender systems have changed the way people find products, information, and even other people. They study patterns of behavior to know what someone will prefer from among a collection of things he has never experienced. The technology behind recommender systems has evolved over the past 20 years into a rich collection of tools that enable the practitioner or researcher to develop effective recommenders. We will study the most important of those tools, including how they work, how to use them, how to evaluate them, and their strengths and weaknesses in practice. The algorithms we will study include content-based filtering, user-user collaborative filtering, item-item collaborative filtering, dimensionality reduction, and interactive critique-based recommenders. The approach will be hands-on, with six week projects, each of which will involve implementation and evaluation of some type of recommender. In addition to topical lectures, this course includes interviews and guest lectures with experts from both academia and industry. Beginning in February 2015, you will be able to earn a Verified Certificate by verifying your identity via a webcam and a government-issued ID. This option will provide formal recognition of your achievements in the course and includes the University of Minnesota logo. Before then, you can complete a “test run” of the exam. You can then re-take the exam after the Verified Certificate becomes available. For information regarding Verified Certificates, see https://courserahelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201212399-Verified-Certificates