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A big general question (profile matching)

Posted: Sat May 08, 2010 7:46 pm
by MiniMonty
Hi all,

just finished and delivered a community site which has thrown up a question for me.
If one member has a profile of $x=1, $y=2 and $z=3 how might I go about matching them with another
member with the same or similar profile ?

i.e. to suggest people who live close together (or even in the same country) that they might have something in common ?

I guess my question is about profile matching generally and I'd be grateful for any links / tips / snippets to lead me onto a path
that might enlighten me.

Best wishes
Monty

Re: A big general question (profile matching)

Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 2:12 am
by cpetercarter
The first step is to work out what you mean by a "match" - only you can do that, because only you know the characteristics of your membership group and the things of interest to them. What are the profile elements which are important in your case - age? gender? location? interests? Are any of them "yes/no" elements ie elements where if the answer is yes then there is a potential match; and if the answer is no then there definitely isn't a match. Then you might weight other possible elements - say 5 points for same gender (or opposite gender?), 3 points for ages within 5 years, 5 for ages within 2 years, 10 for same city, 5 for each matching interest etc.

Having done that, the programming task may be fairly straightforward. Select from the database of profile information the relevant fields for records which match the "yes" answers (eg all records where gender = male); then calculate a score for each of these according to the scoring scheme you have devised; finally order by scores and select the top, say, 5 or those where the score is above a certain minimum level.

Does that give you some clues?