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Inside UC Berkeley's High Tech Joke Recommender

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the much-better-than-my-bone-rolling-system dept.

alphadogg writes "Every day is something like April Fools' Day at the University of California, Berkeley joke recommendation site, dubbed Jester. Now on Version 4.0, the site tosses visitors a handful of jokes to rate on a scale of "less funny" to "more funny." It then recommends jokes based on the user's taste (or lack thereof), dynamically making recommendations based on the user's most recent ratings. Jester's more than a joke jukebox though. Underlying it is a Berkeley-patented "collaborative filtering algorithm" dubbed Eigentaste , now on Version 5.0. The more people who use the system and rate jokes, the more data Berkeley researchers have to advance their understanding of recommendation systems, like those used by Amazon.com and other Web sites."

6 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Link to the actual thing... by adpsimpson · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those who want to actually see it, not a blog about it - Jester

    --
    Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
    John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
  2. Nailed Me! by phobos13013 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I must say, after ten jokes, it got me spot on. Longer, story-like jokes with ironic or twist ends! Me likes!

    In my case it seemed to hit on all the things i hated first and then after about ten jokes in, just started riffing. I wonder how long till i exhaust the database...

    --
    ...and it should be known by now
  3. Re:Other uses? by interiot · · Score: 4, Informative

    yes.

  4. Re:Warning. It's another covert US military projec by techpawn · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.

    --
    Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
  5. Re:Rate on intrinsic humor by FailedTheTuringTest · · Score: 3, Informative

    Alas, without a system for users to submit their own jokes I don't think there's enough data in the system to get useful results out of it.

    Ask and ye shall receive (if the site recovers from slashdotting): http://eigentaste.berkeley.edu/user/suggestjoke.php

  6. Re:Rate on feminist humor by geminidomino · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's actually one of the jokes, except the answer was trimmed to "That's not funny."

    I laughed