CRATE CRAWL

Q:
What happened to the recommender system?

A:
The plan is that some days similaritiesengine.com will show the recommender system, and some days it will show this game. The switching isn't turned on yet, so for now the recommender system is still where it always was.

Q:
Why switch back and forth like that?

A:
Because the game talks about specific album names all day. If you play it and then go straight over to the recommender system and enter your five favorites, the albums you just saw are going to influence what you type, and that skews the data the system learns from. It doesn't amount to much at today's numbers, which is why both are up right now. It won't stay that way once the game gets busy.

Q:
The selection of albums that appear in the game play seems kind of... limited. What's up with that?

A:
The game play works off the Similarities Engine main "links" table. That table was created by tabulating 17,285 "sets of 5" from real people, as of 8-12-2026. That is not a bad number for a system like this, but it will all work better when a couple thousand more new modern users have put in their favorites. Right now the database is strongest in the area of 1990's alternative rock, but it is getting more widely knowledgeable all the time.

Q:
I'm interested in finding a nice readable primer on how this type of collaborative filtering works. Where can I find one?

A:
My expired patent from 1998 is not a bad place to start. Find it here.

Q:
Are you kidding?

A:
Pretty much, yes. Patents are a pain to learn to read. (But the basic primer is in there, you just have to skim past a bunch of patent fluff to get to it.) I hope to have a nice primer video of how it all works done soon, I'll post it here.

Q:
Where is all this going?

A:
Who knows. Get in touch if you want to influence that.

Q:
Where's the Easter egg that appears somewhere on the recommender system pages?

A:
If I told you that, it wouldn't be an Easter egg, now would it?