[MWForum]building a movie recommending system

[Wendy Petti]

Hi Folks,

Vasant Dhar, a new member of the MWForum, would like our assistance.  He had
trouble posting his message to the list and has asked me to repost it.
Since list-posting seems a bit unreliable, please also copy him on any
replies (hit "reply all").

Thanks,
Wendy

-----Original Message-----
From: Vasant Dhar [mailto:vasant.dhar@db.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2004 5:14 PM
To: wpetti@mathcats.com
Cc: vdhar@stern.nyu.edu; Vasant Dhar
Subject: Microworlds Request from Yesterday


Wendi, I sent my message to the list, bit it apparently didn't post. I got
no responses, which I thought
was odd. I called Sean at LCSI and he told me he didn't see anything. Maybe
my subscription didn't work
right (even though I received email conformation saying that it did).

Could you PLEASE post my message to the list and ask people to reply to me
at
vdhar@stern.nyu.edu

I'm getting a little desperate and need to know whether I should abandon
trying this problem
in this language.

Thanks,

Vasant Dhar

Here's the request:

I am trying to build a very simple recommender system for movies in
Microworlds. It will work as follows:

1. System asks user to specify GENRE of interest, i.e. comedy, thriller,
etc.
2. System searches through a table of past movies (HISTORICAL_MOVIES)
corresponding to the specified GENRE. Call this subset SUBSET.
3. System presents user with SUBSET and asks which movies user liked (or it
can ask for a ranking, which is preferable). Let's call this LIKED_SUBSET.
4. System matches attributes of LIKED_SUBSET with a table of CURRENT_MOVIES
to determine SUGGESTED_SUBSET which consists of ranked movies.
5. If user is satisfies, quit, otherwise go to step 1.

This is a pretty simple problem, easily solvable in BASIC. How do I do it in
MW? The way I see it, it involves creating a tables of movies (historical
and current), which should be sets of structured objects whose
attribute-values can be accessed and matched. And the results should be
assigned
via some kind of assignment statement to variables etc.

HELP!!!!

Vasant Dhar
Please reply to this address as well as vdhar@stern.nyu.edu