A Unified Theory of the Mobile Sequential Recommendation Problem

A theory is developed to unify the original form, and its many variations, of the mobile sequential recommendation (MSR) problem. The unified theory, expressing the same MSR problem, is superior to the original form in many aspects including a more standardized form. In addition to a newly proposed expected traveling time (ETT) function to measure the quality of recommended routes, we introduce five additional improvements. Also, three essential mathematical properties of the new objective function enable the development of the methods to solve realistic MSR problems with complex conditions. The MSR solutions also support the discovered properties of the proposed objective function. The unified theory should support the long-term decision making for drivers and the traffic department in general.