Week 2

This week we were able to fully write a script that can be used to rate songs. This is huge because we can get data right away without having the front end up and running at all. The python script that we wrote first asks you for your name. If it hasn't been seen before, it creates a key that we will store all the data for that specific user. After you type in your name a song starts playing. Initially we had the vlc player pop up when the music was playing. After deliberation we decided this was not necessary and suppressed the vlc pop up. Once you have heard enough to rate the song, you exit the player (Ctrl+C once suppressed), and type in an integer from 1-5. If you type a value outside this range, or type in a non-integer, it ignores the input and will ask you for the rating again. Once 200 songs are rated the script exits and a file containing the key (person's name), song name (given value), and star rating (from 1-5) is written. Right now we can only run the script from one computer so only one person can rate songs at a time. This will need to change for us to get all the data we need. Also, we need to allow the user to exit early without destroying the complete value. You can lose previous data if you exit the terminal while writing the script. Finally, we would like to have a counter return the number of songs you have rated. Since 200 is such a large number this would be helpful to know how much longer you have.

On the backend we have explored some different learning algorithms on the limited data that we do have. Some literature has pointed towards SVM and SVD as good tools to start. We have implemented some code with different parameters, to learn on our small data set. As more data flows in we will be able to refine these learning algorithms and make our recommendations more accurate.

On the frontend we have have familiarized ourselves with django which is the webframe that we will be hosting on. In the next couple days we will go into more detail on the work that has gone on there.