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Trying to discover a way to code an application that uses the recommendation library I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, I started thinking on how could be improved a conference’s schedule and I came out with this little speech recommendation system.

What is it ?

It’s a little web application that uses data collected from users choiches to suggest you a bunch of speeches that you may detect interesting. For each speech a recommendation index is calculated using Pearson Distance algorithm and an appropriate message is given to the user based on that index.

How it Works ?

The application elementary asks you for a few speeches you are sure to attend to, then it calculates the Pearson distance between yours and other users choiches and basing on that index it finds what one. speeches may be interesting for you.

Screenshot and application’s link

Here is a screenshot of the application, I used YUI base css pack to speed up the developing process while keeping the layout clean and cross browser.

The ‘choose a few speeches you are sure to attend’ phase

The ‘a bunch of speeches you may find useful’ phase

Now, what next ?

Well, now it’s time to try out the conference speeches recommendation body; when the application will start to collect a considerable amount of data I’ll publish some statistics about the most wanted speech !

Try WhichSpeech?, RailsConf2008 recommendation system!

Disclaimer

What I created is intended as an exercise about approval algorithms and it works only by estimating your preferences based upon other users choices. It does not aim to show that some speeches are better that others.