Collective Intelligence with Python 1

We have a base of data first

recommendations.py

critics={'Lisa Rose': {'Lady in the Water': 2.5, 'Snakes on a Plane': 3.5,
 'Just My Luck': 3.0, 'Superman Returns': 3.5, 'You, Me and Dupree': 2.5,
 'The Night Listener': 3.0},
'Gene Seymour': {'Lady in the Water': 3.0, 'Snakes on a Plane': 3.5,
 'Just My Luck': 1.5, 'Superman Returns': 5.0, 'The Night Listener': 3.0,
 'You, Me and Dupree': 3.5},
'Michael Phillips': {'Lady in the Water': 2.5, 'Snakes on a Plane': 3.0,
 'Superman Returns': 3.5, 'The Night Listener': 4.0},
'Claudia Puig': {'Snakes on a Plane': 3.5, 'Just My Luck': 3.0,
 'The Night Listener': 4.5, 'Superman Returns': 4.0,
 'You, Me and Dupree': 2.5},
'Mick LaSalle': {'Lady in the Water': 3.0, 'Snakes on a Plane': 4.0,
 'Just My Luck': 2.0, 'Superman Returns': 3.0, 'The Night Listener': 3.0,
 'You, Me and Dupree': 2.0},
'Jack Matthews': {'Lady in the Water': 3.0, 'Snakes on a Plane': 4.0,
 'The Night Listener': 3.0, 'Superman Returns': 5.0, 'You, Me and Dupree': 3.5},
'Toby': {'Snakes on a Plane':4.5,'You, Me and Dupree':1.0,'Superman Returns':4.0}}

In Python, you can use the pow(n,2)function to square a number and take the square root with the sqrt function:

 

>>from math import sqrt
>>sqrt(pow(5-4,2)+pow(4-1,2))

after being improved, we use instead

>>1/(1+sqrt(pow(5-4,2)+pow(4-1,2)))

So the value would always be 0 - 1

 

We add the flowing code to recommendations.py

from math import sqrt

def sim_distance(prefs,person1,person2):
    si={}
    for item in prefs[person1]:
        if item in prefs[person2]:
            si[item]=1

    if len(si)==0:return 0

    sum_of_squares=sum([pow(prefs[person1][item]-prefs[person2][item],2)
                        for item in prefs[person1] if item in prefs[person2]])
    print(1/(1+sum_of_squares))

sim_distance(critics, 'Lisa Rose', 'Claudia Puig')