A Maximum Margin Matrix Factorization based Transfer Learning Approach for Cross-Domain Recommendation

Abstract

Recommender systems usually employ techniques like collaborative filtering for providing recommendations on items/services. Maximum Margin Matrix Factorization (MMMF) is an effective collaborative filtering approach. MMMF suffers from the data sparsity problem, i.e., the number of items rated by the users are very small as compared to the very large item space. Recently, techniques like cross-domain collaborative filtering (transfer learning) is suggested for addressing the data sparsity problem. In this paper, we propose a model for transfer learning in collaborative filtering through MMMF to address the data sparsity issue. The latent feature matrices involved in MMMF are clustered and combined to generate a cluster-level rating pattern called codebook and a codebook transfer is used for transfer of information. Transferring of codebook and finding the predicted rating matrix is done in a novel way by introducing a softness constraint into the optimization function. We have experimented our methods with different levels of sparsity using benchmark datasets. Results from experiments show that our model approximates the target matrix well.