Machine learning for new friends recommendation in NTU

Abstract

NiceTomeetU (NTmU) is a friend recommendation platform exclusive to Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students. The development of NTmU is an ongoing final year project led by Associate Professor Hui Sui Cheung, and was initially established by NTU students Chia Ching Chuen, Le Tan Khang and Chang Jun Hao. NTmU provides a supplementary platform for NTU students to connect with more people within the school. It aims to encourage more friendships between students across different courses and nationalities, thus potentially broadening students’ social circles within the institution. The initial version of the NTmU system consists of a web-based application built using the Django framework and a mobile-based application built using the Flutter framework. NTmU makes use of machine learning techniques for generating word vectors based on the user’s profile descriptions and hobbies. Cosine similarity is used for calculating the similarities between the vectors and matching similar users for recommendations. This report covers the main modifications and enhancements made to the web-based (Django) version of the NTmU system.