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Content-Based Movie Recommendation System Using Genre Correlation

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Content-Based Movie Recommendation
System Using Genre Correlation

SRS Reddy, Sravani Nalluri, Subramanyam Kunisetti, S. Ashok

and B. Venkatesh

Abstract A recommendation system is a system that provides suggestions to users

for certain resources like books, movies, songs, etc., based on some data set. Movie
recommendation systems usually predict what movies a user will like based on
the attributes present in previously liked movies. Such recommendation systems
are beneficial for organizations that collect data from large amounts of customers,
and wish to effectively provide the best suggestions possible. A lot of factors can
be considered while designing a movie recommendation system like the genre of
the movie, actors present in it or even the director of the movie. The systems can
recommend movies based on one or a combination of two or more attributes. In this
paper, the recommendation system has been built on the type of genres that the user
might prefer to watch. The approach adopted to do so is content-based filtering using
genre correlation. The dataset used for the system is Movie Lens dataset. The data
analysis tool used is R.

1 Introduction

In this age of the Internet, the quantity of data transactions that happen every minute
has increased exponentially. The huge amount of data has dramatically increased
with the number of users on the Internet. However, not all the data available on the
Internet is of use or provides satisfactory results to the users. Data in such huge
volumes often turns out to be inconsistent and without proper processing of this
information, it gets wasted. In such cases, users have to run their search multiple
times before they finally obtain what they were originally looking for. To solve this
problem, researchers have come up with recommendation systems. A recommenda-
tion system provides relevant information to the users by taking into account their
past preferences. Data is filtered and personally customized as per the user require-
ments. With more and more data available on the Internet, recommendation systems

S. Reddy (B) · S. Nalluri · S. Kunisetti · S. Ashok · B. Venkatesh

VIT University, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 391

S. C. Satapathy et al. (eds.), Smart Intelligent Computing and Applications,
Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies 105,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1927-3_42
392 S. Reddy et al.

have become really popular, due to their effectiveness in providing information in a

short time-span. Recommender systems have been developed in various areas such
as music, movies, news, and products in general. In today’s age, a majority of orga-
nizations implement recommendation systems for fulfilling customer requirements.
LinkedIn, Amazon, and Netflix are just a few to name. LinkedIn recommends rel-
evant connections of the people the user might know among the millions that are
subscribed on the portal. This way, the user does not have to run extensive searches
for people manually. Amazon recommendation systems work such that they suggest
correlated items that the customers can purchase. If a certain customer prefers buy-
ing books from the shopping portal, Amazon provides suggestions related to any
new arrivals in previously preferred categories. In a very similar way, Netflix takes
into account the types of shows that a customer watches, and provides recommen-
dations similar to those. By the method in which recommendation systems work,
they can be broadly classified into three categories—Content-based, Collaborative
and Hybrid approach. A content-based recommendation system considers the user’s
past behavior and identifies patterns in them to recommend to recommend items that
are similar to them. Collaborative filtering analyses the user’s previous experiences
and ratings and correlates it with other users. Based on the ones that have the most
similarity, recommendations are made. Both content-based- and collaborative-based
filtering have their own limitations. To overcome this, researchers suggested a hybrid
approach which would combine the advantages of both the methods. This paper sug-
gests a content-based recommendation system that utilizes genre correlation. The
dataset used for this purpose is a Movie Lens dataset containing 9126 movies which
are classified according to genres. There are a total of 11 genres. The ratings for
these moves have been collected from 671 users. By taking into account the movies
which received high ratings from the users, movies containing similar genres are
recommended to them.

2 Background

Recommender systems are broadly classified into three types—collaborative filtering

systems, content-based filtering systems, and hybrid systems [3]. Collaborative sys-
tems utilize inputs from various users and run various comparisons on these inputs [3].
They build models from the past behavior of the users [1]. Movie recommendation
systems, for example, utilize the ratings of users for various movies [2], and attempt
to find other like-minded users, and recommend movies they have rated well [3].
Collaborative filtering systems have two approaches—memory-based approaches
and model-based approaches [3]. Memory-based approaches continuously analyze
user data in order to make recommendations [3]. As they utilize the user ratings,
they gradually improve in accuracy over time [3]. They are domain-independent and
do not require content analysis [3]. Model-based approaches develop a model of a
user’s behavior and then use certain parameters to predict future behavior [3]. The
use of partitioning-based algorithms also leads to better scalability and accuracy [3].
Content-Based Movie Recommendation System Using Genre Correlation 393

Content-based filtering systems analyze documents or preferences given by a par-

ticular user, and attempt to build a model around this data [3]. They make use of a
user’s particular interests and attempt to match a user’s profile to the attributes pos-
sessed by the various content objects to be recommended [3]. They have the added
disadvantage of requiring enough data to build a reliable classifier [1]. Content-based
filtering systems are divided into three methods—wrapper methods, filter methods,
and embedded methods [3]. Wrapper methods divide the features into subsets, run
analysis on these subsets and then evaluate which of these subsets seems the most
promising [3]. Filter methods use heuristic methods to rate features on their content
[3]. Both these methods are independent of the algorithms used. In contrast, embed-
ded methods are coupled with the algorithm used—feature selection is performed
during the training phase [3]. Hybrid systems combine collaborative and content-
based filtering systems, in order to optimize the recommender systems, and reduce
the drawbacks present in each of the two methods [3]. Thus, it tries to stretch the
benefits of one method to compensate for the disadvantages of the other [3]. There
are three types of hybrid systems—weighted hybrid, mixed hybrid, and cross-source
hybrid [3]. In weighted hybrid systems, a score is maintained for each object, finding
the weighted sum with respect to the various context sources [3]. These are given
different weights based on a user’s preferences [3]. In mixed hybrid approaches,
each source is used to rank the various items, and the top few items from each rank
list are picked [3]. Cross-source hybrid methods recommend items that appear in
multiple context sources [3]. These methods work on the principle that the more
sources an item appears in, the more important the item [3]. Wakil et al. attempted to
improve their recommendation system by filtering using emotions [4]. When a user
watches a certain type of movie, certain emotions are triggered from within them
[4]. In the same way, the emotions of a user can trigger the need to watch a certain
type of movie [4]. They recognized that traditional user profiles do not take into
account the user’s emotional status, and designed an algorithm that utilizes emotion
determination [4]. It analyses a color sequence chosen by the user in accordance
with his emotions to determine current emotional state of the user [4]. Debnath et al.
proposed a hybrid recommendation system that utilizes feature weighting [5]. They
determined the importance of various features to each user, and accordingly assigned
weights to these features [5]. They then found the weighted sum in order to predict
which items would further interest the user [5].

3 Recommendation System Using Content-Based Filtering

The approach used for building the recommendation system is content-based filter-
ing. As discussed earlier, content-based filtering analyses user’s past behavior and
recommends items similar to it based on the parameters considered. This aims at
recommending movies to users based on similarity of genres. If a user has rated
high for a certain movie, other movies containing similar genres are recommended
by the system. The dataset used in for this purpose is subdivided into two sections.
394 S. Reddy et al.

One section contains the list of movies along with the genres that they have been
categorized under. The other part of the dataset contains a list of ratings of movies
that have been rated by the user on a scale of 1–5, with 5 being the highest. First,
a combined dataset of movies, genres and their ratings has to be constructed for
correlating genres with the ratings. For the sake of simplicity, the ratings have been
converted to binary values. If the rating given by a particular user is greater than
3, it receives a value of 1, otherwise it receives a value of −1. The genres are also
segregated in a binary format, maintaining a consistent approach. Out of the set of
11 genres that are present in total, if a movie has a certain genre, it receives the value
of 1. If the genre is not present in the movie, it receives a value of 0. The user profile
matrix provides a combined effect of the genres and ratings by computing the dot
product of the genre and the ratings matrix. Again for the sake of consistency, a
binary format is adopted. If the dot product is a negative value, 0 is assigned to it.
For a positive value, 1 is assigned to it. After obtaining a dot product matrix of all the
movies, a similarity measure is calculated by computing the least distance between
the user under consideration and the others. The values which have the least deviation
with respect to the current user’s preferences are the ones that are recommended by
the system. The algorithm adopted for building the recommendation system is given
below:

Algorithm Step 1. Construct a data frame of the genre dataset with movie ID as
the rows and genres as columns separated by pipeline character.
Step 2. Make a list of all the genres that are available in the dataset.
Step 3. Iterate through the previously made genre data frame. If a genre is present
in a movie, value of 1 is assigned to the genre matrix.
Step 4. Read the ratings sheet and construct a ratings matrix which assigns 1 for
movies which has rating more than 3 and −1 for movies which has ratings
less than or equal to 3.
Step 5. Calculate the dot product of the two matrices—genre matrix and ratings
matrix. This is the result matrix
Step 6. Convert the result matrix to a binary format. For a negative dot product
value, assign 0, else assign a value of 1.
Step 7. Calculate the Euclidian distance between the current user and other users.
Step 8. Retain the rows which have the minimum distance. These are the recom-
mended movies for the current user.

Offloading is a method of transferring resource-intensive application from

portable device to remote server by considering different parameters. Offloading
mechanisms involves three tasks before it get executed. They are partitioning, pro-
filing, offloading decision.
Content-Based Movie Recommendation System Using Genre Correlation 395

4 Simulation Results

The genre matrix constructed with rows containing movies and genres separated by
columns. There are a total of 11 genres in the dataset (Fig. 1).
The ratings matrix for each user corresponding to the movie ID is converted to a
binary format. Every user has rated one or more than one movie (Fig. 2).
Using the genres matrix and ratings matrix, the result matrix is computed which
is the dot product of the previous two matrices. The result is further converted in a
binary format in Fig. 3. If the value of the dot product is more than 0, 1 is assigned
to that cell otherwise 0 is assigned.

Fig. 1 Genre matrix

Fig. 2 Ratings matrix

396 S. Reddy et al.

Fig. 3 Result matrix

Fig. 4 Euclidean distance

After computing the result matrix, the Euclidean distances with respect to the
other users are obtained and the ones having the minimum value is recommended as
represented in Fig. 4.
Figures 5 and 6 shows the output of the various movies that have been recom-
mended to the users based on their previous behavioral patterns.

5 Conclusion and Future Work

The recommendation system implemented in this paper aims at providing movie

recommendation based on the genres of the movies. If a user highly rates a movie of
a particular genre, movies containing similar genres will be recommended to him.
Recommendation systems are widely used in today’s era of Web 2.0 for searching
for reliable and relevant information. While simple recommendation systems rec-
ommend users based on a few parameters, complex ones take many parameters into
consideration. By implementing machine learning in recommender systems, intel-
 Content-Based Movie Recommendation System Using Genre Correlation 397

Fig. 5 User 1 recommendations

Fig. 6 User 2
recommendations

ligent recommendations can be made for customers. Given the potential of such
systems, they have a huge commercial value. Several MNCs have been exploiting
the potential of recommendation system to lure customers into using their products.
This also impacts greatly on the field of data mining and web mining.
Mobile cloud computing (mcc) is able to save energy, improve application and
experience of the users. All frameworks mentioned above have their own benefits
and issues but still not up to level to address all issues related to security, energy and
user experience. Security issues are key problem in mcc, they need to be focused
more compare to other issues.

References

1. Ghuli, P., Ghosh, A., Shettar, R.: A collaborative filtering recommendation engine in a distributed
environment. In: 2014 International Conference on Contemporary Computing and Informatics
(IC3I). IEEE (2014)
2. Zhao, L., et al.: Matrix factorization + for movie recommendation. In: IJCAI (2016)
3. Bhatt, B.: A review paper on machine learning based recommendation system. Int. J. Eng. Dev.
Res. (2014)
4. Wakil, K., et al.: Improving web movie recommender system based on emotions. (IJACSA) Int.
J. Adv. Comput. Sci. Appl. 6(2) (2015)
5. Debnath, S., Ganguly, N., Mitra, P.: Feature weighting in content based recommendation system
using social network analysis. In: Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on World
Wide Web. ACM (2008)

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