Open Access

ARTICLE

User Role Discovery and Optimization Method Based on K-means++ and Reinforcement Learning in Mobile Applications

by Yuanbang Li^*, Wengang Zhou, Chi Xu, Yuchun Shi

School of Computer Science and Technology, Zhoukou Normal University, Zhoukou, 466001, China

* Corresponding Author: Yuanbang Li. Email:

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2022, 131(3), 1365-1386. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmes.2022.019656

Received 07 October 2021; Accepted 30 November 2021; Issue published 19 April 2022

Abstract

With the widespread use of mobile phones, users can share their location and activity anytime, anywhere, as a form of check-in data. These data reflect user features. Long-term stability and a set of user-shared features can be abstracted as user roles. This role is closely related to the users’ social background, occupation, and living habits. This study makes four main contributions to the literature. First, user feature models from different views for each user are constructed from the analysis of the check-in data. Second, the K-means algorithm is used to discover user roles from user features. Third, a reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed to strengthen the clustering effect of user roles and improve the stability of the clustering result. Finally, experiments are used to verify the validity of the method. The results show that the method can improve the effect of clustering by 1.5∼2 times, and improve the stability of the cluster results about 2∼3 times of the original. This method is the first time to apply reinforcement learning to the optimization of user roles in mobile applications, which enhances the clustering effect and improves the stability of the automatic method when discovering user roles.

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Keywords

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