Learn how AI calculates similarity between items to recommend things you'll probably like
Part of How Netflix, Spotify, TikTok Know You
Educational content slides
You love "Butter" by BTS (2021)
Spotify suggests "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars (2014)
Seems random? Both are upbeat, funky, danceable. But how did Spotify measure this similarity?
The secret: calculating distance between vectors in mathematical space.
Two songs with similar numbers = close together = similar vibe
Two songs with different numbers = far apart = different vibe
Distance is how AI measures similarity.
Test your understanding with this quiz.
Netflix says 'Demon Slayer' and 'Jujutsu Kaisen' have 0.78 similarity. What does this number actually mean?
Complete this exercise and get AI-powered feedback.
Similarity matching isn't perfect. Sometimes high similarity scores produce terrible recommendations.
Your task: Analyze a failure case. What did the algorithm get wrong? What feature was missing from the vector?
This teaches: The limitations of similarity and how feature engineering determines quality.