Recommendations

A recommendation is a suggestion intended to guide a decision or action. Recommendations can be issued to help consumers choose products, services, or content, or to inform policy, strategy, or personal conduct. They are typically tailored to the needs, preferences, or constraints of an audience and may involve trade-offs among alternatives.

Common types include product recommendations, behavioral recommendations (how to act given a goal), policy recommendations, and process or strategy recommendations. They may originate from experts, analysts, or automated systems, and can be based on empirical data, theoretical reasoning, or a combination of both.

Methods range from human-centric approaches, such as expert panels and scenario analysis, to data-driven methods used by recommender systems, including collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, and hybrid models. Quality is judged by relevance, usefulness, clarity, and the consideration of alternative options and uncertainties. Transparency and privacy are increasingly emphasized.

Applications span consumer technology, business decision support, public policy, health, and education. Limitations include biases in the underlying data, misinterpretation of user intent, and the potential for narrowing choices. Good practice emphasizes disclosure of methods, ongoing evaluation, and mechanisms for user feedback and correction.