Album Ranker 3.0

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Moonbeam
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Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

Apparently the download links to the Album Ranker program have expired, so I thought it would be a good idea to enhance the program a bit based on some feedback.

There are 2 main features that have been added:

1. Comparisons are now weighted based on date. One of the best suggestions I received was to make the ranking algorithm account for the time of comparisons. After all, taste changes over time so an album you may have liked a lot 2 years ago may not hold up as well today. The weights follow an exponential decay model with a user-chosen half-life. The default I have set it to is 100 days, but as explained in the ReadMe file, this can be adjusted as needed. The down-side to this is that comparison dates were not stored in previous versions of the program, so if you want to use the new version, you'll have to start from scratch! I'll see if I can make a workaround to this if people are interested...

2. Users may now "zap" the comparison history of an album of their choice. I had planned on implementing this earlier but it somehow slipped through the cracks. This would have been more useful when dates weren't factored in, but it is still useful in a few scenarios. Namely, if you think you made a mistake in a comparison, you can zap one of the albums in question. Also, if you simply feel that an album isn't ranked where it "should" be, you can zap it and see if the new comparisons change things.

Here are a few download links:

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Henrik
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Henrik »

Moonbeam, these changes sound awesome! Would it be possible to also zap the comparison history for the last x comparisons? I would like to get a number of comparisons, make a playlist based on them and when I've listened to the songs I would go back and correct the comparisons. Even better would be to get a list of coming-up comparisons and make the playlist from that, but I suppose that would be even more difficult to set up.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

Henrik wrote:Moonbeam, these changes sound awesome! Would it be possible to also zap the comparison history for the last x comparisons? I would like to get a number of comparisons, make a playlist based on them and when I've listened to the songs I would go back and correct the comparisons. Even better would be to get a list of coming-up comparisons and make the playlist from that, but I suppose that would be even more difficult to set up.
I suppose now that I'm recording dates that I should be able to do that. I'll have a play around and see what I can do.

As for upcoming comparisons, though, it's impossible to predict, because it depends on the (unknown) performance of other songs/albums.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Henrik »

Forget my comment, Moonbeam. I thought that you could go back and adjust certain comparisons, but now I had a look at the readme file and realised that what you offer is to erase the entire comparison history for an album.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

Henrik wrote:Forget my comment, Moonbeam. I thought that you could go back and adjust certain comparisons, but now I had a look at the readme file and realised that what you offer is to erase the entire comparison history for an album.
Indeed. I could look into changing this, though, so that only the last x comparisons are zapped. One slight hiccup in this would be if you want to zap, say, the most recent 8 comparisons, and the 8th and 9th most recent comparisons happened on the same day. I've considered days to be the smallest increment of time to record (as I don't think it's necessary to downweight a comparison from a matter of hours ago), but this may be trivial.

What it seems that you are after, though, is something my program can't do. It doesn't hold a memory of what comparisons have been zapped once they are gone, so there is no guarantee that such comparisons will come up again. You can manually get around this, though, by typing in set = c(id1, id2) where id1 and id2 are the ids for the items you want to compare. I was envisioning the program to generate totally random comparisons instead of predetermined ones.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Henrik »

Thanks for your reply, Moonbeam.
Moonbeam wrote:Indeed. I could look into changing this, though, so that only the last x comparisons are zapped.
Please don't work too hard with this. At least not for me as it's not really what I'm after, I think. What I really would like to do is to make a comparison between more than two albums/songs at once. Say for example that I want to listen to and rank 10 songs while I'm going to work. I would like to type for example source("Album Ranker.txt"),10 and after setting up the playlist listening to the songs I would rank them as e.g. 4,7,8,9,2,10,3,1,5,6. Sounds easy? :whistle:

Another thing that perhaps would be easier: I typically have ranked lists to begin with and would prefer to start with a ranked list rather than that all albums are equal. Would it be possible to add a feature so that initial points could be given (perhaps in the Album list.txt file)?
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by nicolas »

Great improvements Moonbeam, even if I'll have to reinstall the program and start from scratch !!
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Zorg »

Downloaded. I'll give you my (no doubt sycophantically positive) impressions soon.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Listyguy »

This is great! I'm definitely going to use it for my songs list!
Moonbeam you're awesome.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

Henrik wrote:Thanks for your reply, Moonbeam.
Moonbeam wrote:Indeed. I could look into changing this, though, so that only the last x comparisons are zapped.
Please don't work too hard with this. At least not for me as it's not really what I'm after, I think. What I really would like to do is to make a comparison between more than two albums/songs at once. Say for example that I want to listen to and rank 10 songs while I'm going to work. I would like to type for example source("Album Ranker.txt"),10 and after setting up the playlist listening to the songs I would rank them as e.g. 4,7,8,9,2,10,3,1,5,6. Sounds easy? :whistle:

Another thing that perhaps would be easier: I typically have ranked lists to begin with and would prefer to start with a ranked list rather than that all albums are equal. Would it be possible to add a feature so that initial points could be given (perhaps in the Album list.txt file)?
I see that R has a base function to calculate Levenshtein distances between character strings, so that could make it easy for me to implement an "add list" feature to the program whereby the user inputs a ranked list in a tab-delimited text file and the program adds all of the inherent comparisons.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

Nic and Zorg,

I'm happy to see that there is still some interest in my program! :D I promise that future enhancements won't require you to start from scratch.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by nicolas »

Thanks ! And hope that your back is getting better !!
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Brad »

Moonbeam - I've been using the ranker for my Song list and am at over 2000 songs (hoping to add a LOT more).
I'm now getting this error message:

Warning messages:
1: Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
2: Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
3: Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)

It looks like I've hit my limit, but wanted to ask if there's anything I can do to create more capacity.

PS- Just went back and tried to run source again, got the following:
> source ("Album Ranker.txt")
Error: cannot allocate vector of size 79.8 Mb
In addition: Warning messages:
1: In array(NA, c(length, length, 5)) :
Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
2: In array(NA, c(length, length, 5)) :
Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
3: In array(NA, c(length, length, 5)) :
Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
4: In array(NA, c(length, length, 5)) :
Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)

Thanks!
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

Brad wrote:Moonbeam - I've been using the ranker for my Song list and am at over 2000 songs (hoping to add a LOT more).
I'm now getting this error message:

Warning messages:
1: Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
2: Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
3: Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)

It looks like I've hit my limit, but wanted to ask if there's anything I can do to create more capacity.

PS- Just went back and tried to run source again, got the following:
> source ("Album Ranker.txt")
Error: cannot allocate vector of size 79.8 Mb
In addition: Warning messages:
1: In array(NA, c(length, length, 5)) :
Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
2: In array(NA, c(length, length, 5)) :
Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
3: In array(NA, c(length, length, 5)) :
Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)
4: In array(NA, c(length, length, 5)) :
Reached total allocation of 1535Mb: see help(memory.size)

Thanks!
Oh dear. I've run into a similar issue with my song list, which currently stands at 2585 entries. I have made a modified version of the code to try to address this, but I still sometimes get this error after making comparisons for awhile. I have been able to manually circumvent the problem by copying and pasting the relevant code into R. It's a clumsy solution, but I'm happy to send you the tweaked code if you're ok with it.

Another possibility is that the code currently allows for up to 5 wins by a given item against another item. I don't discourage rematches, particularly now with a time element included as tastes can change. Hence, for me, the dates array is 5 x 2585 x 2585, which is where I think the problem lies with memory. Another alternative might be to reduce the maximum number of wins per comparison pair. Perhaps 3 will do the trick?

Let me know what you think I can draft up something for you.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Brad »

Thanks so much for responding, Moonbeam. I love this program.

If I'm understanding you correctly, I think I'd rather try the "tweaked code" repair, if it's not too difficult to implement for a novice like myself.

If you think that's do-able with not too much time & effort on your part, perhaps you could email me offline at ModAcc3@aol.com at your convenience.

Thanks again, this is very much appreciated!
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by John »

Can I transfer my folders to a new computer (with R installed) without any data loss?
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

John wrote:Can I transfer my folders to a new computer (with R installed) without any data loss?
Sure! All you need to do is keep the text file with the list of albums and the Albums.RData file and you should be good to go. Also make sure you install the KernSmooth package when you install R on your new machine.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Listyguy »

Are star ratings required or will the program still run if I leave that column blank?
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

Listyguy wrote:Are star ratings required or will the program still run if I leave that column blank?
It should work without the star ratings.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Listyguy »

Moonbeam wrote:
Listyguy wrote:Are star ratings required or will the program still run if I leave that column blank?
It should work without the star ratings.
Thanks. Also, should I be concerned that every single comparison I've done (between 20 and 30) has had at least on Beatles' song in it? I have about 900 songs in the system (50 by the Beatles).
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Zorg »

When you enter the comparison loop for the very first time, I believe it goes through your list from the top down to the bottom. I assume on your Album List.txt file, you started with all of the Beatles' songs. Give it time, though I may be wrong.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

Zorg wrote:When you enter the comparison loop for the very first time, I believe it goes through your list from the top down to the bottom. I assume on your Album List.txt file, you started with all of the Beatles' songs. Give it time, though I may be wrong.
This is correct. The comparisons will find out which songs have been ranked the least and proceed through those songs in the order that you've entered them. So if you entered all Beatles songs first, expect to see them appear in bunches as choice #1.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Listyguy »

Ok, thanks. I figured something like that was going on after it went alphabetic for a while past the Beatles.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Listyguy »

I'm loving the program, but I thought you would like to know about a minor glitch I found. When I used artist display for Queen, all of their songs appeared, along with "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols. Like I said, it's not important, but I figured you'd like to know about it.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

The artistdisplay function does a simple character search and outputs any matches in the combination of artist and song. So artistdisplay("Queen") would indeed list all songs by Queen as well as songs by Queens of the Stone Age, for example, or "The Queen Is Dead" by The Smiths. This anomaly was actually a result of a decision I had to make. The reason for this is because I didn't want to exclude cases where there were featured artists (e.g. "Queen and David Bowie - Under Pressure"), and I wanted to be able to search for specific songs as well. I've got over 300 Prince songs in my list and while it is interesting to see them all, sometimes I may be interested in knowing the position of a single song. Also, it's interesting to compare cover versions when I have the cover and original included.

Finally, I made the choice because it is possible (albeit clumsy) to list only songs with a certain artist entry. For Queen, you can type artistdisplay("Queen -").
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by prosecutorgodot »

I tried the links, but all of them have the file date limit expired. Maybe I'm missing something, but I doubt it. Is it possible for Moonbeam or someone else to upload the program? I would be so grateful! :romance-kisscheek:
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by babydoll »

prosecutorgodot wrote:I tried the links, but all of them have the file date limit expired. Maybe I'm missing something, but I doubt it. Is it possible for Moonbeam or someone else to upload the program? I would be so grateful! :romance-kisscheek:
Search for the "Question for Moonbeam About His Program" thread. The link Stephan provided works. At least, it did for me a few months ago.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by prosecutorgodot »

babydoll wrote:
prosecutorgodot wrote:I tried the links, but all of them have the file date limit expired. Maybe I'm missing something, but I doubt it. Is it possible for Moonbeam or someone else to upload the program? I would be so grateful! :romance-kisscheek:
Search for the "Question for Moonbeam About His Program" thread. The link Stephan provided works. At least, it did for me a few months ago.
Nope, it doesn't work. :?
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by babydoll »

prosecutorgodot wrote:
babydoll wrote:
prosecutorgodot wrote:I tried the links, but all of them have the file date limit expired. Maybe I'm missing something, but I doubt it. Is it possible for Moonbeam or someone else to upload the program? I would be so grateful! :romance-kisscheek:
Search for the "Question for Moonbeam About His Program" thread. The link Stephan provided works. At least, it did for me a few months ago.
Nope, it doesn't work. :?
Oh, wow. It really doesn't work. It was a shot, though.

Someone needs to relink that program.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by prosecutorgodot »

I'm still looking out for an Album Ranking Program! I don't really know things about uploading programs to the Internet, (I guess you could use Dropbox?) but it would be ultra appreciated if someone could upload it!
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by spiritualized »

prosecutorgodot wrote:I'm still looking out for an Album Ranking Program! I don't really know things about uploading programs to the Internet, (I guess you could use Dropbox?) but it would be ultra appreciated if someone could upload it!

I second that !
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Sweepstakes Ron »

Splish splash, I was raking in the cash
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by prosecutorgodot »

Sweepstakes Ron wrote:Does this work?

https://mega.nz/#!HwRGFD4D!jB77rCviVj3Q ... NWRNjUeQU0
I downloaded the file, but have yet to have the time to try it out (but should be fine :mrgreen: ) Thank you!
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by spiritualized »

Thank you for the link.
Tried the program and it reminded me of what the allourideas.org website does (although the "half-life" idea doesn't feature there).
I haven't tried the stats tools yet
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

Sorry for the delay to those who have contacted me. The truth is that I thought I had lost it! The USB on which I had it was stolen, but I found a backup. Anyone intersted can PM me if they still haven't been able to get the program from the mega link posted.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Bruno »

Moonbeam wrote:Sorry for the delay to those who have contacted me. The truth is that I thought I had lost it! The USB on which I had it was stolen, but I found a backup. Anyone intersted can PM me if they still haven't been able to get the program from the mega link posted.
Good!
Works in ioS?
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

Bruno wrote:
Moonbeam wrote:Sorry for the delay to those who have contacted me. The truth is that I thought I had lost it! The USB on which I had it was stolen, but I found a backup. Anyone intersted can PM me if they still haven't been able to get the program from the mega link posted.
Good!
Works in ioS?
Hi Bruno,

Unfortunately, no. ioS does not support R currently. However, I am thinking of making a new version of AlbumRanker which can run R behind the scenes in a way that ioS can utilise.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Bruno »

Moonbeam wrote:
Bruno wrote:
Moonbeam wrote:Sorry for the delay to those who have contacted me. The truth is that I thought I had lost it! The USB on which I had it was stolen, but I found a backup. Anyone intersted can PM me if they still haven't been able to get the program from the mega link posted.
Good!
Works in ioS?
Hi Bruno,

Unfortunately, no. ioS does not support R currently. However, I am thinking of making a new version of AlbumRanker which can run R behind the scenes in a way that ioS can utilise.
Thanks, Moonbeam! ;)
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by John »

I know, this is a really old thread that I'm bumping. But, Moonbeam doesn't seem to be active right now so I'm hoping somebody still uses this fantastic program? I'm wondering if there's a way to get the ratings into an Excel sheet? We have the text file but that doesn't update the ratings based on what R generates. I've tried just copy/pasting into a text file, but it doesn't come up with a clean way to delimit as far as I've been able to gather. Anybody know of a good way to get the data out of R into a spreadsheet?
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

This should do the trick for a tab-delimited txt file that you can open in Excel.

write.table(display, file = "My List.txt", sep = "\t", row.names = FALSE)
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by Moonbeam »

In other news, I've been thinking about getting into some research of paired comparisons. Sometime when I get time, I'd like to do a simulation comparison of various algorithms to see which ones are superior. I like my program as is, but that matrix multiplication does take a long time... I've since encountered some alternatives which might be promising, even if I have to tweak them (and hey, I might get some more journal articles out of it!). I'm also considering vastly improving the interface by learning how to build an app using shiny. Maybe a project for when I get long service leave.
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Re: Album Ranker 3.0

Post by John »

Thanks for the help, Moonbeam!
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