
So I finally graduated. My thesis took around 13 months to complete, but was graded with an 8.5/10, which is high enough to forget about how long it took.
The thesis is available from the TU/e library website. It discusses the study I performed on the similarities between an algorithm called matrix factorization that predicts ratings for movies, based on ratings that users have given in the past, and psychological ways to describe preferences. To make this comparison I deployed an online study to investigate how people perceive similarities in movies.
I just received my grade for the first of two papers I have to write before receiving my Master’s degree. It’s good and I enjoyed the research, so why not post it online?
The study is a wee bit too small to be submitted to a conference paper, but too large to be completely forgotten, so I’m posting it online. The study tried to study the occurrence of choice overload in a movie recommender system and whether or not diversifying the set of recommendations alleviates choice overload. The results were not really conclusive, but good enough to base a second study on. And enough questions rose to base a master thesis research on. So go ahead and read it if you want to.
So today, because I was bored, we had a warsow duel cup. 10 People signed up: lokirulez, mky, Huksi, DalaiLamer, rvg, glitterglove, frk, Gcor3, uNCool and myself. Oldschool style brackets with the wacom and we had some good matches.
The finals were rvg versus mky on acidwdm2 and wdm14. And it were good fights. rvg took home the gold in this entertaining ad hoc quickcup. Thanks all for playing and until next time