John DeRiggi
Assignment 16
Summary and Analyzation
What did the class find interesting about the article
In general, I thought the class was kind of vauge on their descriptions of what they found interesting. Which is in agreement with the broad tone of the paper. Some people found it interesting that the article was discussing in depth some issues that they formerly took for granted like recommendation. Other participants touched on topics like filtering and automated recommendation.
What the class found uninteresting about the article
Some people found the article to vague, lacking of new information, and boring. Others were more skeptikal of certain issues such as weblogs and some questioned the relevency of cognitive filtering if we are getting our recommendations from experts anyway. Also, how do we determine what an expert is? I thought these were very valid questions.
What was the main message of the article
The class seemed to be divided into two groups on this question. Some people believed that the article was not centralized enough to have a single main message. Others thought that the main idea was that recommendation systems are useful with the increasing amount of information available today. It was also pointed out that recommender systems are difficult to develop.
Describe how you use non-computational recommendation systems in your daily life
This was probably the most unified answer among the assignments that I read. Nearly everyone said that they use friends or critics reviews when deciding on a movie to go see. I assume that this was a popular answer because it is the most regularly used form of non-computational recommendation used among college students. Others mentioned that they have heeded the advice of friends and colleagues when deciding on a schools.
Have you used any of the systems mentioned in the article?
The most common answers were google, amazon, slashdot, and CDNow. Most people said that they are motivated by their desire for further knowledge on a particular subject.
Choose one of the systems and describe your experience with it.
With recommendation systems, some said that they felt the need to contribute some sort of recommendation after using the site. Jon gave a thorough description of his experience with Amazon.com. He mentioned that the site recommended him a few things that seemed totlally unrelated for what he was browsing for. This possibly points out how reccomender systems might be used (or abused) to guide people in certain directions regardless of what they are looking for.