{"ID":2866599,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20134","arxiv_id":"2509.20134","title":"Intelligent Algorithm Selection for Recommender Systems: Meta-Learning via in-depth algorithm feature engineering","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.","short_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 equiv...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20134","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.20134v1","authors":"[\"Jarne Mathi Decker\"]","published":"2025-09-24T14:00:37Z","proceeding":"cs.IR","tasks":"[\"cs.IR\",\"cs.LG\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}