Data Science Commons^™

Exploring The Long Tail, Joseph H. Hajjar

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

The migration of datasets online has created a near-infinite inventory for big name retailers such as Amazon and Netflix, giving rise to recommendation systems to assist users in navigating the massive catalog. This has also allowed for the possibility of retailers storing much less popular, uncommon items which would not appear in a more traditional brick-and-mortar setting due to the cost of storage. Nevertheless, previous work has highlighted the profit potential which lies in the so-called "long tail'' of niche, unpopular items. Unfortunately, due to the limited amount of data in this subset of the inventory, recommendation systems often struggle …