informationfromlike

Informationfromlike is a conceptual framework in information science and artificial intelligence that describes deriving information by analyzing items that are similar to a target item, i.e., like items. The term blends information, from, and like to emphasize inference from analogues rather than direct observation. It functions as a descriptive label for methods that exploit similarity relationships to propagate information across data in a network.

Core mechanisms involve building a similarity graph where nodes represent data items and edges connect neighbors based on a chosen similarity metric. Information is then propagated along the edges using diffusion, label propagation, or attention-weighted aggregation, allowing missing attributes or labels to be inferred from nearby items.

Applications include knowledge base completion, recommender systems, data imputation, and improving search relevance by leveraging analogies between records. Informationfromlike is commonly used as a complement to supervised learning, enabling inference from unlabeled or partially labeled data and enhancing robustness in sparse-data regimes.

Limitations include dependence on the quality of the similarity metric, potential bias or error propagation through the network, and the risk of oversmoothing distinct signals when diffusion is too strong. Effective use requires validating similarity choices, combining with other signals, and auditing propagated results.

See also: semi-supervised learning, graph neural networks, label propagation, diffusion on graphs, similarity metrics.