Recommended systems and an introduction to collaborative filtering

In this section, we'll cover collaborative filtering and recommender systems. We'll start out by explaining what may constitute a recommender system, how users willingly share loads of data about themselves, without knowing it, and then we'll cover collaborative filtering.

Whether you realize it or not, you interact with numerous recommender systems on a daily basis. If you've ever purchased from Amazon, or browsed on Facebook, or watched a show on Netflix, you've been served some form of personalized content. This is how e-commerce platforms maximize conversion rates and keep you coming back for more.

One of the marks of a really good recommender system is that it knows what you want whether you already know it or not. A good one will make you really wonder: how did they know that? So, it turns out that humans are extraordinarily predictable in their behavior, even without having to share information about themselves, and...