lj interest vectors

[dr4b]

hmm, luxnightmare posted about this - an lj feature that lets you see which people are most similar to you based on interests.

strangely, jcreed is my top match (but I am only #4 for him). I don't know many of the people who came up at all, actually. what also is funny is that Carl doesn't even show up on mine at all, but I am #2 on his list. i'm not on Eli's at all, but that's unsurprising.

Comments

[ssaiscps.livejournal.com]

I am amused by the exponential falloff on mine.

[ssaiscps.livejournal.com]

Also, I think it should be normalized for the total number of interests. If you have 80 interests, how much interest can you really have in, say, "demure lemurs wearing sweaters"?

...

I'm adding that.

[seanmcguire.livejournal.com]

How fascinating. The person most similar to me is my ex-girlfriend kalmn, who seems unable to stand me.

Actually, looking at possible reasons for that makes me really question their algorithm... I suspect they do something like weighing less common interests more highly...

[techstep.livejournal.com]

I suspect they do something like weighing less common interests more highly...

Bingo. It's a preliminary implementation, and it's all but guaranteed to be refined within the next few days/weeks.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Seems to have been tweaked over the last day or two -- very different results from last time I tried it.

[techstep.livejournal.com]

This was on LJ back in 2000, but it's been down with the rest of the directory for quite a while, due to slowness and instability and whatnot. But it's all finally back up again. Yay.

jcreed is also my top match, which makes a certain amount of sense given the current formula (we're interested in things not too many others are, like type theory and constructive logic). Actually, I'm friends with the top 5 (though #2 doesn't count, since I nominally maintain the economics community). The joys of having interests not too many others are interested in, but I suspect that influence is going to be less of a factor as time goes on and the formula is refined.

[chaoticgoodnik.livejournal.com]

I ran that and I didn't know any of my matches. :)

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Heh.
I got jcreed to move from very low to #2 by the simple method of adding "tigris & euphrates" to my interests list. :)