From: Trans <transfire@...>
Date: 2008-08-23T17:44:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Interesting challenge - can it be done?



On Aug 23, 12:51 am, Adam Akhtar <adamtempor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi im learning ruby and making a few scripts here and there. As part of
> an ongoing script regarding ebay i came up with a challenge though i
> dont know if its possible.
>
> Given say 200 items from ebay from the same category e.g. cameras I
> would like put them in groups based on similiarity.
> E.g. find all listings that are for canon ixy 500 and put them in one
> group
>
> Also id like it to understand the difference between "canon ixy 500" and
> say 7 listings for "canon ixy 500 camera case"
>
> Another problem are the unrelated words in a listings title that the
> script would have to ingnore e.g. "Bargain", "RARE", "Very RARE", "Did I
> say it was RARE" etc
>
> Of course I dont expect it could ever be perfect but if it could be 60%
> accurate i would be happy!
>
> Elegance is not a priority here so if there is a "hack" which achieves
> similiar results to say some crazy A.I. routine which takes a year to
> write then thats great. What ever gets the job done!
>
> One hack i came up with was to look for model numbers using regexps. It
> works really well, but only if there is a model number. I suppose i
> could first group lisitngs with model numbers and then come up with some
> routine for the remainder. So for items without model numbers what can i
> do?
>
> Also if it takes 2 hours for the script to do the job then fine. At most
> 1000 listings will be used. Speed isnt an issue.
>
> What type of problem is this? is it a.i.??? Whre should i start
> researching (I checked wiki but there wasnt enough written for me to
> know which path to take).
>
> any help\pointers greatly appreciated.

Off the top of my head. Try indexing by keywords:

  keywords.each do |keyword|
    index[keyword] +=1 if (/#{keyword}/ =~ item.description)
  end

Then write "rules" based on keyword combinations.

But this is very general question. From the sound of it I suspect you
need to sit down and do a good bit of reading on programming.

T.