Slashdot Mirror
Inside UC Berkeley's High Tech Joke Recommender
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."
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."
Could this algorithm be applied to porn?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It'd be really interesting to use a site like this to try and determine how people's sense of humor (and response to jokes, which isn't the same thing) clusters.
It's hard in this case though because the jokes are so old and tend to fit closely to five or six templates. Because this means they have very little impact, I tried rating them based on how funny I thought they would be if they were new to me and expressed a bit more concisely, which I found a complicated exercise.
If this thing could be loaded with new jokes, or at least varied jokes, it'd be very interesting to observe the results. for example, would we find that people who like gender-stereotype jokes also like lawyer jokes? Would we find that people who like engineering jokes also like pun-based jokes?
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.
P.S. Shakespeare walks into a pub. And the barman says, "Sorry, you're bard."
P.P.S. So this bear walks into a bar, and the bear says "I'd like a......... beer, please." And the barman says "What's with the big pause?"
P.P.P.S. So this woman walks into a bar, and asks for a double entendre. So the barman gives her one.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I rated 8 jokes and it gave me this recommendation:
Could not connect to user database: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (11)
I don't get it.
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
They are trying to develop the funniest joke in the world.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
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
But before it went it actually did seem to be homing in on my sense of humor.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.