Re:Is Amazon Violating U.S. Antitrust Laws?
by shawnz on Wednesday April 24, 2019 @09:00AM
(#19737872)
> The recipients of those 9,000 ads are being trained to ignore the recommendations ... Likewise, a few clueless recommendations can “spoil” good ones shown at the same time.
How can you be sure that "random" untargeted ads don't have just as bad of an effect? Ultimately Amazon can see the numbers and we can't, and they made their decision based on that. It's pointless to argue over theories without data.
But maybe they should. The recipients of those 9,000 ads are being trained to ignore the recommendations because they’re so useless, and may continue to ignore its suggestions even after it improves. Likewise, a few clueless recommendations can “spoil” good ones shown at the same time.
None of this shows up in the test set, of course, but people tend to turn off their brains when ‘evaluating’ ML stuff.