Claims Analysis
Total Claims: 14
Claim 1
Independent Claim
189 words
A method in a computer system for training a latent class model comprising the steps: receiving data in the form of a list of tupels of entities; receiving a list of parameters, including a number of dimensions to be used in the model training, a predetermined termination condition, and a predetermined fraction of hold out data; splitting the dataset into training data and hold out data according to the predetermined fraction of hold out data; applying Tempered Expectation Maximization to the data to train a plurality of latent class models according to the following steps: computing tempered posterior probabilities for each tupel and each possible state of a corresponding latent class variable; using these posterior probabilities, updating class conditional probabilities for items, descriptors and attributes, and users; iterating the steps of computing tempered posterior probabilities and updating class conditional probabilities until the predictive performance on the hold-out data degrades; and adjusting the temperature parameter and continuing at the step of computing tempered posterior probabilities until the predetermined termination condition is met; and combining the trained models of different dimensionality into a single model by linearly combining their estimated probabilities.
Claim 2
Independent Claim
189 words
A method in a computer system for training a latent class model comprising the steps: receiving data in the form of a list of tupels of entities; receiving a list of parameters, including a number of dimensions to be used in the model training, a predetermined termination condition, and a predetermined fraction of hold out data; splitting the dataset into training data and hold out data according to the predetermined fraction of hold out data; applying Tempered Expectation Maximization to the data to train a plurality of latent class models according to the following steps: computing tempered posterior probabilities for each tupel and each possible state of a corresponding latent class variable; using these posterior probabilities, updating class conditional probabilities for items, descriptors and attributes, and users; iterating the steps of computing tempered posterior probabilities and updating class conditional probabilities until the predictive performance on the hold-out data degrades; and adjusting the temperature parameter and continuing at the step of computing tempered posterior probabilities until the predetermined termination condition is met; and combining the trained models of different dimensionality into a single model by linearly combining their estimated probabilities.
Claim 3
Dependent Claim
22 words
The method according to claim 1 , wherein the entities include at least one of: items; users; content descriptors; attributes; and preferences.
Claim 4
Dependent Claim
19 words
The method according to claim 1 , further comprising combining the updated class conditional probabilities with a preference value.
Claim 5
Dependent Claim
35 words
The method according to claim 1 , wherein the step of combining the trained models includes computing the weights for the trained models being combined to maximize the predictive model performance on the hold-out data.
Claim 6
Dependent Claim
23 words
The method according to claim 1 , further comprising: iteratively retraining all models based on both the training data and the holdout data.
Claim 7
Dependent Claim
17 words
The method according to claim 1 , wherein the step of adjusting the temperature parameter is omitted.
Claim 8
Dependent Claim
37 words
The method according to claim 1 , further comprising: splitting the training data into a plurality of blocks and updating the tempered posterior probabilities after the posterior probabilities have been computed for all observations in one block.
Claim 9
Dependent Claim
18 words
The method according to claim 1 , wherein the received data consists only of items characterized by text.
Claim 10
Dependent Claim
19 words
The method according to claim 1 , wherein the received data consists only of pairs of users and items.
Claim 11
Dependent Claim
20 words
The method according to claim 1 , wherein the received data consists only of triplets of users, items, and ratings.
Claim 12
Dependent Claim
26 words
The method according to claim 1 , wherein the received data consists only of: pairs of users and items; and triplets of users; items and ratings.
Claim 13
Dependent Claim
16 words
The method according to claim 1 , further comprising: extracting hierarchical relationships between groups of data.
Claim 14
Dependent Claim
59 words
The method according to claim 1 , wherein the step of receiving data includes receiving similarity matrices for the similarity of at least one of: items; and users; integrating the similarity matrices into the step of updating the tempered posterior probabilities by transforming similarities into probabilities; and smoothing the estimates of the class conditional probabilities using the transformed similarities.