[thelist] user types [was algorithm design]

Pablo Oliva poliva at cox.net
Mon Sep 30 14:13:00 CDT 2002


The part that I am seeking help in is the portion where I have to
determine what category the user will be place in.  There will be 4 user
types/characters that will be predefined.  The user will answer 20
questions, and based on their answers I would have to develop some sort
of algorithm to distinguish what type of user they are.  I will try to
limit to select type questions (meaning that they will not have to give
freeform "written" responses, but rather select from a list).  I thought
that this would be more complicated than a series of if/else statements,
but based on the initial responses to this question, I was wrong.

Yes, the answers would be stored in a database.  I would prefer to use
PHP on this.

Any suggestions?

I have been told to read up on the following:
"Affinity Diagramming", "User Profiling", "Card Sorting", "Cluster
Analysis", There are data-reduction methods that allow you to simplify
what to look for (called K-maps), Karnaugh-maps.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
> [mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Michael Mell
> Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 11:29 AM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: Re: [thelist] user types [was algorithm design]
>
>
> In what part of the process are you seeking help?
> How many data elements are involved? How many does it take to
> determine the user's type? Are you using a database? What
> language are you using?




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