Abstract

While Machine Learning is one of the most popular research areas in Computer Science, there are still only a few deployed applications intended for use by the general public. We have developed an exemplary application that can be directly applied to eBay trading. Our system predicts how much an item would sell for on eBay based on that item's attributes. We ran our experiments on the eBay laptop category, with prior trades used as training data. The system implements a feature-weighted k-Nearest Neighbor algorithm, using genetic algorithms to determine feature weights. Our results demonstrate an average prediction error of 16%; we have also shown that this application greatly reduces the time a reseller would need to spend on trading activities, since the bulk of market research is now done automatically with the help of the learned model.

Degree

College and Department

Physical and Mathematical Sciences; Computer Science

Rights

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