Association: finding links
Association is all about finding and marking relationships between things. Dating algorithms
such as OKCupid have association at their core, looking for connections between members and
suggesting matches based on the findings. Amazon’s recommendation engine uses a similar
idea, connecting your interests to those of past customers. It’s what led to the intriguing
shopping suggestion that confronted Reddit user Kerbobotat after buying a baseball bat on
Amazon: ‘Perhaps you’ll be interested in this balaclava?’11
Filtering: isolating what’s important
Algorithms often need to remove some information to focus on what’s important, to separate the
signal from the noise. Sometimes they do this literally: speech recognition algorithms, like
those running inside Siri, Alexa and Cortana, first need to filter out your voice from the
background noise before they can get to work on deciphering what you’re saying. Sometimes
they do it figuratively: Facebook and Twitter filter stories that relate to your known interests to
design your own personalized feed.
Association is all about finding and marking relationships between things. Dating algorithms
such as OKCupid have association at their core, looking for connections between members and
suggesting matches based on the findings. Amazon’s recommendation engine uses a similar
idea, connecting your interests to those of past customers. It’s what led to the intriguing
shopping suggestion that confronted Reddit user Kerbobotat after buying a baseball bat on
Amazon: ‘Perhaps you’ll be interested in this balaclava?’11
Filtering: isolating what’s important
Algorithms often need to remove some information to focus on what’s important, to separate the
signal from the noise. Sometimes they do this literally: speech recognition algorithms, like
those running inside Siri, Alexa and Cortana, first need to filter out your voice from the
background noise before they can get to work on deciphering what you’re saying. Sometimes
they do it figuratively: Facebook and Twitter filter stories that relate to your known interests to
design your own personalized feed.
No comments:
Post a Comment