Good Recommendations

A recommendation can said to be advice about some Thing based up on an Advisor’s prior experience of the Thing, knowledge of the wider Domain, and knowledge about an Advisee. I’ve home-brewed that definition from a variety of dictionary sources, but I’m hoping it doesn’t push the levels of acceptability too far. It suits what is to follow quite well, and I’ve even drawn a diagram:

From personal experience, people generally recommend things that they know a bit about and won’t often recommend things they don’t personally like. If the assumption holds that an Advisor will have better knowledge about the Things they like, recommendations should be best made about things the advisor personally rates.

From this we can approximate ‘things that people like’ to equal ‘things they are likely to recommend’.

Knowledge about the preferences of the Advisee matters too. I’m more likely to provide a well received recommendation to someone I know than someone I don’t. In this regard, I might also be able to provide a recommendation about some Thing I don’t necessarily like; although my knowledge of the Thing is likely to be more limited.

It follows that the more knowledge the Advisor has about the Thing, and about the wider Domain, and about the Advisee, the better the recommendation the Advisor will probably make.

Are recommendations best made from an Advisor who knows more about the Thing or the Domain than the Advisee? Most people I know don’t like being told things they already know, but self affirmation is nice sometimes.

Is an Advisee with only a small amount in common with the Advisor more likely to receive a recommendation less in line with their current preferences, but one that may be more interesting as a consequence? Conversely, is the Advisee with a large amount in common with the Advisor more likely to receive a recommendation in line with their current preferences, but is likely to be more obvious as a consequence? How much does the variety / specialism of the Advisors and Advisee’s current preferences matter?

It seems there is potential for a sliding scale between interesting and obvious recommendations, both of which may be good for different reasons.

A ‘good’ recommendation depends entirely on the Advisees expectation of the type of recommendation anticipated from the Advisor. How much can this be inferred by size of and the variation within the Domain shown in their initial preferences? It could well be that an Advisee that already shows more variety in their current preferences will be more ‘willing’ to accept off-kilter recommendations than one which is already more specialist. But it could also be that an Advisor who exhibits similar variation in their preferences to their Advisees will also make more acceptable recommendations.

We can infer that recommendations containing a good balance of interestingness while in keeping with existing preferences, are best made when an Advisee has a good proportion of current preferences in common with an Advisor. But should this be relative to their own preferences, or relative to their Advisor’s preferences? And to what extent does the variation of Domain preferences matter?

In the next post I’ll be introducing Set Theory as a mechanism for analysing these relationships.