Factorization Machines in JavaScript

Introduction to Factorization Machines

Welcome to this lesson on factorization machines, an important model in the realm of recommendation systems. Factorization machines (FM) excel at capturing interactions between variables, making them a powerful tool for both regression and classification tasks. For instance, they can predict a rating (regression) or calculate the likelihood of a recommendation (classification).

Review of Dataset Preparation

Before we dive into implementing a factorization machine, let's briefly revisit the dataset preparation process from the previous lesson.

Previously, you learned how to load data from JSON files and represent it as arrays of objects in JavaScript. You also created a user-item interaction matrix using dummy variables (one-hot encoding) and enriched the dataset with auxiliary features such as user preferences and genre similarity. These steps are crucial for building a dataset that can be used for accurate predictions in a recommendation system.

For this lesson, assume your data is structured as an array of objects, where each object represents a user-item interaction with features like:

JavaScript
{
  user1: 0, user2: 1, user3: 0, // one-hot user
  item1: 0, item2: 0, item3: 1, // one-hot item
  uf1: 0.7, uf2: 0.2,           // user features
  if1: 0.5, if2: 0.1,           // item features
  rating: 4.0                   // target value
}

To train the model, you will need to convert this array of objects into two arrays:

  • X: an array of arrays, where each sub-array contains the feature values for one interaction (excluding the target).
  • y: an array of target values (e.g., ratings).

Theory Behind

Factorization machines leverage interactions between variables by decomposing them into simpler, latent factors. Mathematically, the prediction for a factorization machine can be expressed as:

y^(x)=w0+∑i=1nwixi+∑i=1n∑j=i+1n⟨vi,vj⟩xixj\hat{y}(\mathbf{x}) = w_0 + \sum_{i=1}^{n} w_i x_i + \sum_{i=1}^{n} \sum_{j=i+1}^{n} \langle \mathbf{v}_i, \mathbf{v}_j \rangle x_i x_j

Here's what each component represents:

  • y^(x)\hat{y}(\mathbf{x}): The predicted value.
  • w0w_0: The global bias term.
  • wiw_i: The weight associated with the feature xix_i.
  • xix_i: The individual features of the input vector x\mathbf{x}.
  • ⟨vi,vj⟩\langle \mathbf{v}_i, \mathbf{v}_j \rangle: The dot product between the latent vectors of two features, capturing their pairwise interaction.
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