Interactive Multifactorial Evolutionary Optimization Algorithm with Multidimensional Preference Surrogate Models for Personalized Recommendation

Abstract

Interactive evolutionary algorithms (IEAs) coupled with a data-driven user surrogate model (USM) have recently been proposed for enhancing personalized recommendation performance. Since the USM relies on only one model to describe the full range of user preferences, existing USM-based IEAs have not investigated how knowledge migrates between preference models to improve the diversity and novelty of recommendations. Motivated by this, an interactive multifactorial evolutionary optimization algorithm with multidimensional preference user surrogate models is proposed here to perform a multi-view optimization for personalized recommendation. Firstly, multidimensional preference user surrogate models (MPUSMs), partial-MPUSMs, and probability models of MPUSMs are constructed to approximate the different perceptions of preferences and serve for population evolution. Next, a modified multifactorial evolutionary algorithm is used for the first time in the IEAs domain to recommend diverse and novel items for multiple preferences. It includes initialization and diversification management of a population with skill factors, recommendation lists of preference grading and interactive model management of inheriting previous information. Comprehensive comparison studies in the Amazon dataset show that the proposed models and algorithm facilitate the mining of knowledge between preferences. Eventually, at the cost of losing only about 5% of the Hit Ratio and Average Precision, the Individual Diversity is improved by 54.02%, the Self-system Diversity by 3.7%, the Surprise Degree by 2.69%, and the Preference Mining Degree by 16.05%.