Combining statistics and expert human judgement for better recommendations

Jay Wang and Jasmine Nettiksimmons explore the business model of Stitch Fix, an emerging startup that uses artificial intelligence and human experts for a personalized shopping experience, and highlight the challenges encountered implementing Stitch Fix's recommendation algorithm and interacting AI with human stylists.

Jay Wang and Jasmine Nettiksimmons explore the business model of Stitch Fix, an emerging startup that uses artificial intelligence and human experts for a personalized shopping experience. Stitch Fix’s service combines recommendation algorithm and human stylists in curating clothes for customers. Jay and Jasmine discuss data collection and feature engineering for the recommendation algorithm, as well as some algorithmic innovations. They then highlight the challenges encountered implementing Stitch Fix’s recommendation algorithm and interacting AI with human stylists before briefly introducing other problems Stitch Fix’s data science team is solving, including language processing, computer vision, inventory simulation, and demand forecasting.