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Explaining Recommendations: Design and Evaluation

  • Chapter
Recommender Systems Handbook

Abstract

This chapter gives an overview of the area of explanations in recommender systems. We approach the literature from the angle of evaluation: that is, we are interested in what makes an explanation “good”. The chapter starts by describing how explanations can be affected by how recommendations are presented, and the role the interaction with the recommender system plays w.r.t. explanations. Next, we introduce a number of explanation styles, and how they are related to the underlying algorithms. We identify seven benefits that explanations may contribute to a recommender system, and relate them to criteria used in evaluations of explanations in existing recommender systems. We conclude the chapter with outstanding research questions and future work, including current recommender systems topics such as social recommendations and serendipity. Examples of explanations in existing systems are mentioned throughout.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A fifth section on mixed interaction interfaces is appended to the end of this original list.

  2. 2.

    The author does not specify which similarity metric was used, though it is likely to be a form of rating based similarity measure such as cosine similarity.

  3. 3.

    http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1038261936872356908.html, retrieved Feb. 12, 2009.

  4. 4.

    In [76] participants reported that they found incorrect overestimation less useful in high cost domains compared to low cost domains.

  5. 5.

    By overestimation we mean that the prediction is higher than the final or actual rating, and underestimation when the prediction is lower than it.

  6. 6.

    Here we mean the entire recommendation process, inclusive of the explanations. We note however that the evaluation of explanations in recommender systems are seldom fully independent of the underlying recommendation process.

  7. 7.

    http://www.aea.net/AvionicsNews/ANArchives/DesignDisplayOct03.pdf, retrieved Nov. 2013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Aberdeen, AB24 3UE, Aberdeen, UK

    Nava Tintarev & Judith Masthoff

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  1. Nava Tintarev
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Correspondence to Nava Tintarev .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano - Bozen, Italy

    Francesco Ricci

  2. Information Systems Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Lior Rokach

  3. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Bracha Shapira

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Tintarev, N., Masthoff, J. (2015). Explaining Recommendations: Design and Evaluation. In: Ricci, F., Rokach, L., Shapira, B. (eds) Recommender Systems Handbook. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7637-6_10

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