Intelligent Algorithm Selection for Recommender Systems: Meta-Learning via in-depth algorithm feature engineering

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20134v1
• Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2025 14:00:37 GMT
• Title: Intelligent Algorithm Selection for Recommender Systems: Meta-Learning via in-depth algorithm feature engineering
• Authors: Jarne Mathi Decker,
• Abstract summary: "No Free Lunch" theorem dictates that no single recommender algorithm is optimal for all users.<n>Standard meta-learning approaches aim to solve this by selecting an algorithm based on user features, but treat the algorithms themselves as equivalent, "black-box" choices.<n>This thesis investigates the impact of overcoming this limitation by engineering a comprehensive feature set to explicitly characterize the algorithms themselves.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: The "No Free Lunch" theorem dictates that no single recommender algorithm is optimal for all users, creating a significant Algorithm Selection Problem. Standard meta-learning approaches aim to solve this by selecting an algorithm based on user features, but treat the fundamentally diverse algorithms themselves as equivalent, "black-box" choices. This thesis investigates the impact of overcoming this limitation by engineering a comprehensive feature set to explicitly characterize the algorithms themselves. We combine static code metrics, Abstract Syntax Tree properties, behavioral performance landmarks, and high-level conceptual features. We evaluate two meta-learners across five datasets: a baseline using only user features and our proposed model using both user and algorithm features. Our results show that the meta-learner augmented with algorithm features achieves an average NDCG@10 of 0.143, a statistically significant improvement of 11.7% over the Single Best Algorithm baseline (0.128). However, we found that the inclusion of algorithm features did not lead to an improvement in overall NDCG@10 over the meta learner using only user features (0.144). While adding algorithm features to the meta-learner did improve its Top-1 selection accuracy (+16.1%), this was counterbalanced by leading to a lower Top-3 accuracy (-10.7%). We conclude that for the per-user algorithm selection task in recommender systems, the predictive power of user features is overwhelmingly dominant. While algorithm features improve selection precision, unlocking their potential to boost overall performance remains a non-trivial challenge.

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