User choice, hidden gems, and the quadratic horizon
Flavio Chierichetti, Mirko Giacchini, Ravi Kumar, Alessandro Panconesi, Andrew Tomkins · 2026
Read User choice, hidden gems, and the quadratic horizon by Flavio Chierichetti, Mirko Giacchini, Ravi Kumar, Alessandro Panconesi, Andrew Tomkins (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13132410.txt.
Description
Flavio Chierichetti and co-authors study recommendation limits on content platforms in a 2026 paper. Platforms show users small sets of items picked from a huge catalog by learned models. The models aim to match each user's tastes as closely as possible.
Even with full knowledge of tastes inside small sets, prediction hits a hard ceiling. The authors call it a quadratic horizon: reliable choice extends only so far beyond the set size. Striking cases show a platform can miss an item loved by millions, doing no better than chance. Theory and tests on varied datasets back the claim. The result warns that small choice windows hide gems by design.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Flavio Chierichetti, Mirko Giacchini, Ravi Kumar, Alessandro Panconesi, Andrew Tomkins |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 24 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |