Personalization and Recommendations - From Theory to Practice

News

Personalization techniques and recommender systems have come of age and have become integral parts of our everyday life on the Web. They represent suitable means for decision support and are thus of utter practical relevance while - at the same time - being based on solid theoretical foundations in statistics and machine learning.
At the same time, while having those solid theoretical foundations, recommender systems also exhibit very practical aspects and thus represent a domain of research where theory and practice keep driving the frontier in tandem, making recommender systems research one of the most vividly investigated.
The seminar at hand aims to investigate the foundations and algorithmic clockworks of recommender systems, their limitations and applications to different domains, as well as their practical use.

We kindly ask prospective participants to apply via HIS-LSF for participation in the indicated seminar
Please note that the number of participants is limited to 10.

The seminar is organized as an en bloc seminar, consisting of two session with mandatory participation.
Session I: The first session will be held on Saturday, May 09, 2015, from 9am s.t. to 1pm (room SR 01-016, Geb. 101). The aim of this first session is to provide all participants with basic knowledge about recommender systems and what will be asked of students in terms of presentation skills and the writing of a scientific report, present the topics to be elaborated in presentations, and assign topics to participants. Moreover, the first session will address the organization of the second session.
Session II: The second session will feature the oral presentations of all 10 participants and take place Saturday, Jun 20, 9am s.t. - Sunday, Jun 21, open end (room SR 01-016, Geb. 101).
Additional information:
- ECTS: 4 cr. (equals 2 SWS)
- Location: As indicated for each session (session I: Geb. 078, 00-014; session II: Geb. 101, SR 02-016/18)
- Language: English/German
- Time: 2 sessions en bloc: see above

Participation in both sessions
Submission of written report (5-10 pages DIN A4, 12 pt., single-spaced, one-column) by Jun 05, 2015, end of day
Oral presentation of each participant (English or German); presentation 30 mins, discussion and question 10 mins; note that presentations have to be in PPT and need to follow the format template handed out in the first session
Final presentations need to be submitted by Jun 12, 2015, end of day, the latest, by email (cai.ziegler at hotmail dot de)
Participation in discussions and the quality of questions raised is also part of the final grade assigned
The final grade is composed 60% oral presentation plus participation in discussions and 40% written report

Topics and references are contained in the document handed out in the first session.
Note that the indicated paper references are only meant as starting point. Students are highly encouraged to search for other suitable references.