computers

Article
A Ranking Learning Model by K-Means Clustering Technique
for Web Scraped Movie Data
Kamal Uddin Sarker 1, * , Mohammed Saqib 2 , Raza Hasan 3, * , Salman Mahmood 4 , Saqib Hussain 3 ,
Ali Abbas 5 and Aziz Deraman 6

1 Department of Computer Science, American International University Bangladesh, 408/1, Kuratoli,

Khilkhet, Dhaka 1229, Bangladesh
2 Business Administration Department, Jumeira University, Latifa Bint Hamdan Street (West), Exit Number 24,
Al Khail Road, Dubai P.O. Box 555532, United Arab Emirates
3 Department of Computing and IT, Global College of Engineering and Technology, Muscat 112, Oman
4 Department of Information Technology, School of Science and Engineering, Malaysia University of Science
and Technology, Petaling Jaya 47810, Selangor, Malaysia
5 Department of Computing, Middle East College, Knowledge Oasis Muscat, P.B. No. 79, Al Rusayl 124, Oman
6 Department of Informatics, University Malaysia Terengganu, Kuala Terengganu 21030, Terengganu, Malaysia
* Correspondence: [email protected] (K.U.S.); [email protected] (R.H.);
Tel.: +88-01944913224 (K.U.S.); +96-898199513 (R.H.)

Abstract: Business organizations experience cut-throat competition in the e-commerce era, where a
smart organization needs to come up with faster innovative ideas to enjoy competitive advantages. A
smart user decides from the review information of an online product. Data-driven smart machine
learning applications use real data to support immediate decision making. Web scraping technologies
support supplying sufficient relevant and up-to-date well-structured data from unstructured data
Citation: Sarker, K.U.; Saqib, M.; sources like websites. Machine learning applications generate models for in-depth data analysis
Hasan, R.; Mahmood, S.; Hussain, S.; and decision making. The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) is one of the largest movie databases
Abbas, A.; Deraman, A. A Ranking on the internet. IMDB movie information is applied for statistical analysis, sentiment classification,
Learning Model by K-Means
genre-based clustering, and rating-based clustering with respect to movie release year, budget, etc.,
Clustering Technique for Web
for repository dataset. This paper presents a novel clustering model with respect to two different
Scraped Movie Data. Computers 2022,
rating systems of IMDB movie data. This work contributes to the three areas: (i) the “grey area” of
11, 158. https://doi.org/10.3390/
web scraping to extract data for research purposes; (ii) statistical analysis to correlate required data
computers11110158
fields and understanding purposes of implementation machine learning, (iii) k-means clustering is
Academic Editors: Phivos Mylonas, applied for movie critics rank (Metascore) and users’ star rank (Rating). Different python libraries are
Katia Lida Kermanidis and
used for web data scraping, data analysis, data visualization, and k-means clustering application.
Manolis Maragoudakis
Only 42.4% of records were accepted from the extracted dataset for research purposes after cleaning.
Received: 14 September 2022 Statistical analysis showed that votes, ratings, Metascore have a linear relationship, while random
Accepted: 31 October 2022 characteristics are observed for income of the movie. On the other hand, experts’ feedback (Metascore)
Published: 8 November 2022 and customers’ feedback (Rating) are negatively correlated (−0.0384) due to the biasness of additional
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
features like genre, actors, budget, etc. Both rankings have a nonlinear relationship with the income
with regard to jurisdictional claims in of the movies. Six optimal clusters were selected by elbow technique and the calculated silhouette
published maps and institutional affil- score is 0.4926 for the proposed k-means clustering model and we found that only one cluster is in
iations. the logical relationship of two rankings systems.

Keywords: movie data; web scraping; statistical analysis; machine learning; k-means clustering

Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
1. Introduction
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), or data science applications are
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
mostly data-driven software. Data are the fundamental elements of knowledge-based self-
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ learning applications. Data denote the individual elements of a fact that are collected from
4.0/).

Computers 2022, 11, 158. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers11110158 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/computers

Computers 2022, 11, 158 2 of 21

one or more sources, that are stored, processed, and analyzed to describe factual informa-
tion. Data could be qualitative/categorical (nominal or ordinal) or quantitative/numerical
(discrete or continuous) [1]. Nominal data do not measure an object but are used to label
variables like country, age, and race. Ordinal data are represented in an order or scale that
measures a variable like, salary, range, rating, or points of a product. Discrete data consist
of fixed values like, number of students, price of a product, etc., while continuous data can
accept any numerical value from a range like water pressure and walking speed. A data
scientist collects, processes, stores, analyzes, splits, merges, and applies effective algorithms
to generate knowledge for decision making. Traditionally, we can collect data from primary
sources or secondary sources, but time and reliability are sensitive in terms of competitive
advantages [1,2]. Web data extraction has become popular [1,3] because it is up-to-date and
accurate and supports better decision making.

1.1. Online Rating

The internet is the largest data source in this world that consists of images, text, videos,
and different files. Most of the dynamic websites are updated by users’ content such as
“review comments”, “like”, “dislike”, “react”, “star rating”, etc., in every moment [4]. These
comments, emotions, and clicks provide valuable feedback of the products and services.
A user can get an idea about the authenticity of information or quality of services or
products. As a result, the internet has become one of the most important data sources,
especially in e-commerce and social media. Besides traditional approaches, automation
applications are also applied for data collection from webpages. Websites consist of data
in HTML tags, and the presentation of data is unique for each internet site [5,6]. Web-
scraping is a process to extract data from websites and transform it into structured data
for further analysis. So, a web-scraper inspects the source code of the website to identify
a specific tag, format, and content that will be mined. A web-scraper writes a program
to extract content of the specific tag by removing unnecessary content of the same tag.
Researchers use web-scraping techniques for automated data extraction from the internet;
search engine optimization parties apply it for analysis and pulling their clients’ sites; and
business organizations perform market analysis using it to make better and faster decisions.
Statistical analysis helps to learn the data, navigate the common issues, understand the
phenomenon, and provides support for decision making [7]. Nowadays, data-driven
machine learning systems support discovering facts, decision making, and prediction [8].
The accuracy and effectiveness of machine learning algorithms depend on the quality and
quantity of data and learning techniques [8,9]. On the other side, accessing authorization
also depends on the level of membership type for most of the e-commerce websites [10]
and an ordinary member or user may not be able to access review details except rating.
In general, there are different potential customers with different experiences and a lower
involvement of members shows the importance of the popularity of a product rather than
of the reviews [11]. Online user rating is biased with personal choice, age, gender, and race
that is not visible for the ordinary users.

1.2. Movie Rating and IMDB

The movie is one of the entertainment products in the film industry. IMDB or Amazon
are popular sites commonly used by moviegoers to select a movie for watching based
on the ratings given by users and movie critics (review score of experts). A movie is
analyzed by experts called movie critics and the common measuring factors are depth of
the story, touching impact, authenticity, wit of the writing, and originality [12]. Movie
scholars dedicate themselves to knowing how a movie influences entertainment, its positive
consequences, and how it generates a predisposition in the movie selection process of
users [13]. IMDB has two different scoring approaches (experts and users) for each movie
and a customer may face difficulty in selecting a movie when there is a large gap between
two different scores. The weight average of many critics generates a score between 0 and
100 and it is called Metacritic or Metascore (https://www.imdb.com/list/ls051211184/)
Computers 2022, 11, 158 3 of 21

accessed on 24 June 2022. The IMDB site uses Metascore from critics and Rating from users
to reduce the search time of its users [l01].
• Research Scope: There is plenty of research on IMDB data analysis and the implemen-
tation of machine learning applications. Most of the works developed their own
supervised models or applied clustering techniques, or performed a statistical anal-
ysis based on the repository data set (details in Section 2). The repository data set
may consist of unnecessary fields at back dated information. Moreover, according to
Quora [14], a good number of customers has no good experience when they select
a movie only based on the scoring systems of Metascore or Rating because Metascore
is biased by human error or business goals and Rating is biased by users’ influential
factors (age, gender, race, and culture). On the other hand, an ordinary user has limited
access on the IMDB movie information and most of the users follow Rating/Metascore,
but it becomes ambiguous when a huge difference exists between these two scores of
a movie.

1.3. Contribution
This research contributes to the three major areas:
(i) We extract up-to-date movie data (movie name, Metascore, Rating, year, votes, and
gross income) from IMDB movie site. This is an ethical (grey area) data extraction
process from the internet, which is more accurate and reliable than collected data from
a third party.
(ii) Data cleansing and analysis is performed to show the correlation between rating,
Metascore, votes, and gross income of the movies. The statistical analysis illustrates the
relationship between Metascore and rating by scatter plot and boxplot for comparison
between two different scoring systems. This supports data validation and feature
selection for machine learning applications.
(iii) Finally, the k-means clustering technique is applied after analyzing the machine learn-
ing approaches that will support a user to select a move from optimal clusters. The rest
of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 consists of recently completed research
in data science and machine learning domains for the IMDB dataset. Section 3 illus-
trates the research methodology aided with a diagram. Web-scraping data extraction,
data analysis (statistical), and implementation of k-Means clustering are executed with
the required explanation and literature in the following three sections (Sections 4–6).
Section 7 explains the result and application of the research. Concluding remarks with
limitations and future work are mentioned in Section 8.

2. Related Work
We are going to use IMDB movie data for our research to study the relationship
between the two types of scoring systems. IMDB movie data are historically applied in
different machine learning techniques. Jasmine Hsieh [15] performed a statistical analysis
based on the movie rating and votes from 2005 to 2015 to see the changing pattern over the
periods according to the genres (comedy, short, sport, adult, animation, etc.) of IMDB listed
movies. Qaisar [16] applied Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) classification for sentiment
analysis based on the users’ comments and Topal et al. [17] applied statistical analysis
to show the ranking changing pattern over a period of movie data. They worked on the
repository dataset of IMDB that is collected from a third party. It has also been analyzed by
different regressions [18] to predict popularity of the movies based on the genre information
of the Kaggle dataset. Naeem et al. applied gradient boosting classifiers, support vector
machines (SVM), Naïve Bayes classifier, and random forest [19], while Sourav M. and
Tanupriya C. applied Naïve Bayes and SVM [20] and both found that SVM is better than
any other classifier for sentiment analysis of IMDB movie review text. Hasan B. and
Serdar K. showed clustering based on the genre of a movie to compare the genres with
respect to other features like rating, release year, and gross income [21]. Aditya et al., on
the other hand, applied different clustering techniques based on the rating with respect
 than any other classifier for sentiment analysis of IMDB movie review text. Hasan B. and
Serdar K. showed clustering based on the genre of a movie to compare the genres with
respect to other features like rating, release year, and gross income [21]. Aditya et al., on
the other hand, applied different clustering techniques based on the rating with respect to
Computers 2022, 11, 158 genre, year, budget, Facebook likes, etc. [22]. The supplementary material (Table4 of 21 in-
S1)
cludes the data of 1000 movies that are in the top of rating list at IMDB.

3.toMethodology
genre, year, budget, Facebook likes, etc. [22]. The supplementary material (Table S1)
includes the data of 1000 movies that are in the top of rating list at IMDB.
This research contributes to web data scraping, statistical analysis, and machine
learning algorithms to analyze the correlation between users’ feedback and experts’ eval-
3. Methodology
uation on the internet, predominantly on a movie ranking website. The introduction sec-
This research contributes to web data scraping, statistical analysis, and machine learn-
tion
ing provided
algorithmsthe preliminary
to analyze understanding
the correlation between of users’
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feedback domain (AI, web
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of the (Figure
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and the aim of this scholarly work.are required for this research. Then, the website is inspected to
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tical analysis and implementation of clustering techniques. On the other hand, Seaborn
extracted data into an appropriate data structure. The Pandas library is used for statistical
and Matplotlib
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4. Data Collection
4. Data Collection
Websites contains huge amounts of information, and the content of the pages is
Websites
updated contains
regularly hugeservices.
for better amounts of information,
User-developed and the
content content information
is dynamic of the pagesthat
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every better services. User-developed
So, our research content
extracts users’ is dynamic
ratings information
from the IMDB moviethat is
website instead
updated of collecting
every moment. So, it
ourfrom a thirdextracts
research party, inusers’
order ratings
to get up-to-date data. This
from the IMDB movie
section describes the importance of internet data, data extraction tools and techniques
from webpages, data extraction legality, and an algorithm for movie data collection from
IMDB website.

4.1. Importance
We are in the digital world and relate to data sources of the digital environment, which
has been increasing due to digitally recorded activities of daily life, business, and news
feeds [2,3]. Every moment, a vast amount of data is generated by the Internet of Things (IoT),
Computers 2022, 11, 158 5 of 21

cyber security, social media, smart devices, smart cities, digital financial services, health
care, and ordinary websites. Machine learning applications are growing fast in the context
of data analysis and computing with intelligent functions [1]. Data analysis applications
need real data from that domain to train a machine learning model. For instance, cyber
security data need to develop automated data-driven cyber security systems and mobile
data are used in smart mobile awareness systems [5]. Similarly, the COVID-19 prevention
system should reflect actions based on the COVID-19 dataset. Data are important when
we can utilize them properly, which is mainly in three forms: unstructured data, semi-
structured data, and structured data [4,6]. Structured data are organized in an order
and represented in a standard format. Typically, the datare are highly organized in the
tabular form (i.e., relational database). Office document files of audio, video, pdf, images,
and websites consist of data that are unstructured and complicated to organize, manage,
and analyze. Semi-structured data are not organized like a relational database, but they
have a unique tie that supports analyzing, such as HTML, XML, NoSQL, and JSON files.
Machine learning applications are data driven and the effectiveness or efficiency relies
on the quality of data [4,7]; even the outcome of a machine learning algorithm differs
based on the characteristics of data [8]. This research extracted unstructured web page
data and converted them to a structured dataset before applying them to machine learning
algorithms and statistical analysis.

4.2. Web Data Scraping

The internet is the main source of information extraction by scanning, indexing, and
parsing [23,24]. Web-scraping is called a scraper that performs mechanical traverse on
websites for data extraction [25]. Web data may be in the form of text, databases, emails,
audio, video, images, blogs, tweets, etc., on web pages [26], which creates several technical
issues in terms of volume, variety, velocity, and veracity [27]. Business organizations
mostly apply decision making applications to a dataset that is collected from the internet
for accuracy and faster decision making [28], though internal data (organization’s record)
are used for analysis with public data (collected from different authentic sources) [29].
Web-scraping is also called data harvesting, screen-scraping, or simply data collecting
from the internet [27]. It is an approach to convert unstructured internet data into a local
structured data source [30] that is much faster and more sophisticated than the traditional
approach [23]. Online scraping involves website analysis, website crawling, and data
extraction [27,31,32] in its interwoven processes of data collection for a special purpose.
It replaced all outdated data collection techniques [32]. Web parsing is common with the
word embedding-based algorithm, the unsupervised lexicon-based method, a lexicon-
based method, the dependency-based semantic parsing method, decision-based lexicon
crowd coding, etc. [33]. It enables automated data collection at a large scale to unlock web
data that can add value to the business by making data-driven decisions. Web-scraping
APIs are available for large scale data extraction services, but all are not free, and most
organizations do not relay the extracted information with APIs [34,35].
Using APIs is a formally supported approach to non-malicious data retrieval, while
explicit data are retrieved by web-scraping [36]. According to Zhao [37] and Taran-
num [38], web-scraping is cheaper, cleaner, and more automatic than web crawling. Data
scientists also prefer HTTP protocol data collection methods for data retrieval from web
pages [17,19,20]. It is popular in consultancy management, insurance, banking, online
media, internet, network security, marketing, IT sectors, and computer software [39]. Non-
profit organizations, government agencies, and universities have archived data [24] for
further use, and business organizations and scientific groups use for instance decision
making [32,36] from the retrieved information by web scraping. It is commonly used in
e-commerce [40,41], banking [42], recruitment agencies [43], and real estate [44] companies
for data collection and is applied to their machine learning algorithms. The web-scraping
dataset is up-to-date and can be used as a training dataset in a machine learning application
Computers 2022, 11, 158 6 of 21

for updating a model. It also enriches the database of a company and performance of the ap-
plication. In this paper, we apply HTTP protocol data collection methods for web-scraping.

4.3. Scraping Technology

Python, R, SQL, and Java are the popular languages for web-scraping and data analy-
sis [45]. Python is comparatively popular in development industries due to the simplicity
of coding, libraries, and packages, though Java is applied for API data collection and R is
used for data analysis widely [43]. However, web scraping is not a use of predefined APIs
from websites [46]. It is imperative for a distinguished integrated development environ-
ment (IDE) that enables programmers to work in a special domain of development. An
IDE supports editing, debugging, and executing features that may vary to the choice of
developers according to experience, working domain, cost, and machine configuration.
Python accompanies an Integrated Development and Learning Environment (IDLE) that
is free and commonly used for beginners on Windows, Linux, or Mac OS. PyCharm is
popular for professionals to work with websites because of its support for CSS, Java Script,
and TypeScript. Visual Studio Code is an open-source IDE of Microsoft commonly used
for Python development due to its smart features and services. Sublime Text 3 has project
directory management features and supports accessing additional packages for web and
data science application development. Atom is an interactive smart editor and supports
cross-platform development. Spyder is an open-source IDE of Anaconda distribution mostly
used for scientific development in data science and machine learning. We used Jupyter
of the Anaconda platform for web-scraping, statistical data analysis, visualization, and
machine learning algorithm. Regular expression, which refers to regex or regexp, is a well-
known technique for data extraction from web pages by the “re” module of Python, but it
creates problems when the HTML consists of ambiguous inner tags [47]. To overcome the
limitations of regular expressions, Document Model Object (DOM)-based libraries are used
in web-scraping application development. Jupyter is widely used in data science for NumPy
(multi-dimensional array), Pandas (data frame), and Matplotlib libraries (plotting data). It
is easy and interactive with code sharing and visualization. Commonly used library of
Python is explained in Table 1.

Table 1. Python libraries for web-scraping.

Libraries Description
It is the most basic and essential library for web-scraping that is used for various HTTP requests like
GET and POST to extract information from HTML server pages [48]. It is simple, support HTTP(s)
Requests
proxy and it is easy to get chunk amount data from static web pages, but it cannot parse data from
retrieved HTML files or collet information from Java script pages [47].
Perhaps it is the most used Python library that creates parse tree for parsing HTML and XML
Beautiful Soup document. It is comparatively easier and suitable for beginners to extract information and combine
with lxml. It is commonly used with Requests in industries though it is slower than pure lxml [47,49].
This is a blazingly fast HTML and XML parsing library of Python that shows high performance for
lxml large amount dataset scraping [49]. It also works with Requests in industries. It supports data
extraction by CSS and XPath selectors but is not good for poorly designed HTML webpages [48].
It was developed for automatic webpage testing and pretty quickly it has turned into a data science
Selenium for web-scraping. It supports web-scraping dynamically populated pages. It is not suitable for large
application but can be applied if time and speed is not a concern.
It is a web-scraping framework that can crawl multiple web sites by spider bots. It is asynchronous to
Scrapy send multiple HTTP requests simultaneously. It can extract data from dynamic websites using the
Splash library [49].

4.4. Web Scraping Legality

Social scientists struggle to retrieve data [50] for research, but nowadays, websites are
the source of a lot of granular and real-time data [51]. That makes the data available for the
Computers 2022, 11, 158 7 of 21

researcher when developing new research questions or answering old questions [52], and
it allows practitioners to understand business strategy [53]. Web-scraping data are used by
government agencies, and market and business analysts without legal issues [33]. A vast
volume of web data extraction can lead to technical, legal, and ethical challenges [51,53].
There is a proliferation of selection tools, techniques, and purposes in a legal way called the
“grey area” of web-scraping [50,54]. Web-scraping is not restricted by legislative addresses,
but it is guided by a set of laws and theories: “Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA),
“Trespass to Chattels”, “Breach of Contract”, and “Copyright Infringement” [54,55]. A
website owner can apply fundamental theories, (i) by posting a terms of uses policy on
their website to prevent programmatic access, (ii) apply the fair use principle to protect
copyright property, (iii) protect premium content from commercial purposes by cease and
desist declaration, (iv) be protected from overload and damage by Trespass to Chattels law
declaration, and (v) the declaration of ethical statement, personal data protection, and data
utilization strategy. Our scraped website (IMDB) is a public website and there is no private
or copyright-protected data. The scraping program cannot damage or create extra load
for the website. It only extracts published information that will only be used for research
by academics. It will not be shared in the public domain, with third parties, or be used
for commercial application. IMDB (https://www.imdb.com/list/ls048276758/?ref=otl2
accessed on 24 June 2022) is the selected website for data extraction using the Pandas
library (Beautiful Soup of Python). Table 2 shows the checklist for ethical data collection
criteria that are maintained by our research team. The IMDB site contains of several
thousand movies in a list where a single page represents information of 200 movies. We
only scraped information from the first 10 pages (total 1000), which takes a few seconds
without interruption of their services.

Table 2. Grey checklist of web-scraping [50,54].

Specification Remarks
Web-scraping is explicitly prohibited by terms and conditions. No
The extracted data are confidential for the organization. No
Information of the website is copyrighted. No
Are data going to be used for illegal, fraudulent, or commercial purposes? No
Scraping causes information or system damage. No
Web-scraping diminishes the service. No
Collected data are going to compromise individuals’ privacy. No
Collected information will be shared. No

4.5. Movie Data Extraction

The aim of this research is to apply a suitable clustering machine learning algorithms
based on the two raking fields: (i) the users giving a rating by stars is called the Rating field
of the dataset and (ii) the movie critics provide feedback via a number called Metascore,
which is specified as Score in the dataset (Table 3). Few extra fields are extracted for
statistical analysis to understand the phenomenon of the relationship but are not utilized in
clustering. Figure 1 illustrates the scraped data fields (tags of the webpages).
 Table 3. Complete dataset.

Unnamed:0
Computers 2022, 11, 158 Name_of_Movie Release_Year Duration_of_Flim Rating Score Votes Income
8 of 21
0 1 Cameraperson 2016 102 7.4 86 2900 0

1 2 Goldfinger 1964 110 7.7 87 189,661 51.08

Table 3. Complete dataset.
2 6 True Grit 2010 110 7.6 80 337,113 171.24

3 Unnamed:0
7 Name_of_Movie
Nebraska Release_Year
2013 Duration_of_Flim
115 Rating 7.7 Score 87 Votes
118,215 Income
17.65

04 1 9 Cameraperson
Paterson 20162016 102 118 7.4 7.3 86 90 2900 81,270 02.14
1 2 Goldfinger 1964 110 7.7 87 189,661 51.08
… … … … … … … … …
2 6 True Grit 2010 110 7.6 80 337,113 171.24
3419 7 78 Nebraska
Pan’s Labyrinth 20132006 115 118 7.7 8.2 87 98 118,215
662,747 17.65
37.63
4 9 Paterson 2016 118 7.3 90 81,270 2.14
The Best Years of Our
. 420
.. . . . 85 ... . . .1946 ... 170 ... 8.1 ... 93 . . 64,310
. . 23.65
..
419 78 Pan’s Labyrinth
Lives 2006 118 8.2 98 662,747 37.63
The Best Years of
420
421 85 88 Tampopo 19461985 170 114 8.1 7.9 93 87 64,310
19,097 23.65
0.22
Our Lives
421 88 Tampopo
Werckmeister 1985 114 7.9 87 19,097 0.22
422 89 Werckmeister 2000 145 8.0 92 14,231 0.03
422 89 harm6niak 2000 145 8.0 92 14,231 0.03
harm6niak
423
423 98 98 Rio Bravo
Rio Bravo 19591959 141 141 8.0 8.0 93 93 62,485
62,485 12.54
12.54

424 rows
424 rows × 8× 8 columns
columns

An
An ordinary
ordinary user
user selects
selects aa movie
movie based
based on on the
the scoring
scoring with
with some
some other
other features
features like
like
name,
name, actors, yearyearof ofrelease,
release,andandsubject
subjectof of
thethe movie.
movie. TheThemoviemovie features
features are inare
anin an
asso-
association rule [56] and we extracted only seven features for statistical
ciation rule [56] and we extracted only seven features for statistical analysis analysis but the aim
aim
of
of the
thework
workisistotosuggest
suggestaamovie
movieonlyonlybased
based ononthe Metascore
the Metascore and
andRating.
Rating.Seven
Sevenfeatures of
features
the movie
of the records
movie recordswere scraped
were scraped(Figure 2) for
(Figure 2) the firstfirst
for the 10001000
movies (first(first
movies 10 pages) formform
10 pages) the
list
the of the
list ofwebsite basedbased
the website on Algorithm
on Algorithm1 without interfering
1 without the website’s
interfering services.
the website’s After
services.
removing the records
After removing that consist
the records of incomplete
that consist or garbage
of incomplete data, 424
or garbage records
data, (Table 3)(Table
424 records were
transformed into the Pandas data frame for analysis and clustering.
3) were transformed into the Pandas data frame for analysis and clustering.

Figure 2.
Figure 2. Selected
Selected fields
fields for
for data-scraping.
data-scraping.

Algorithm 1. Web Scraping

1. BEGIN
2. ASSIGN array Variables
3. for pages !END
4. READ new URL for each page
5. PARSE each page
6. READ main DIV/CLASS/TAG of Data_Fields
7. for required_data_retrive !END
if tag_of Data_Fields !SAME
8. Store_content ← Filter if Need to (READ text_of_tag)
9. Else
10. Store_content [i] ← Filter if Need to (READ text_of_tags)
11. Data_list←pandas_variable.DataFrame(Data_field1 , .. ,data_fieldn )
12. Data_list.to_csv(Local_Data_File.csv)
13. END
Computers 2022, 11, 158 9 of 21

5. Data Analysis
Data are presented in the tags of the web pages that were fetched as a text dur-
ing scraping (by BeautifulSoup), but we are going to apply clustering machine learning
techniques and analysis that will work on meaningful numerical values. The text was
converted to a numerical form by a Python function (to_numeric()) for required fields. We
applied three steps for cleansing: (i) dropped the records that consist of meaningless data
(data.drop(number)), (ii) removed all records that consist of null value on the website but that
are scraped with “000 (data.data(Score !=0)) and “000” (data.data(income !=0)) in the Score and
Income field, respectively. In the text fields of the tags, there might be additional symbols,
special characters, or punctuation that are unnecessary or even barriers to apply arithmetic,
logical, and machine learning applications. We applied regular expressions to remove extra
data with a tag by removing special characters, symbols, spaces, and punctuation. Finally,
424 records were developed into a complete dataset (Table 3) for analysis and machine
learning algorithm application.
Data are stored as a file that could be in a tabular form, image, graph, or even a text
or pdf file. Each form of presentation is important for a particular application but may
not be suitable for all. We extracted data as a tabular form (Table 3), which is easier to
sense and for utilizing cleansing methods. Data scientists apply efficient techniques for
analysis, present and store information using mathematical and statistical models. For
example, the liner equation is applied for linear regression to predict price or customer sat-
isfaction of a business organization. It is commonly used in principal component analysis
for dimensionality reduction, encoding of the dataset, or singular value decomposition.
Our dataset was extracted without unnecessary dimensions. The matrix is used to rep-
resent, store, and analyze images. It is also used to compress a file and our dataset was
comparatively small and there was no need to apply a compression technique. Vector
operations are used to calculate and predict the movement of a machine. To understand
the nature of data, scientists use central tendency and dispersion, while probability is
used in accuracy and prediction models. Moreover, point estimation, interval estimation,
hypothesis testing, and categorization algorithms use distribution theory like Sigmoid and
Gaussian functions. Mathematical and statistical models are commonly used in machine
learning algorithms that are applied in data science. Naïve Bayes, support vector machines
(SVM), and boost algorithms are used for supervised learning [57]. Wavelet coefficients
of natural images are relatively sparse models implemented as a wavelet coefficient for
Computers 2022, 11, xnatural image
FOR PEER processing [58], Shannon source coding theorem is used for uniform coding
REVIEW 10
in tree construction [59], sensing data modeling [60], and applications available for data
transformation, projection of objects, as well as in learning algorithms. A sample of data
could represent the concept
better of overall
visualization information,
of multiple andinnormalization
features a single frame.can also be
Figure applied
3 shows overall rel
for better visualization of multiple
of four movie features in athough
choice parameters single frame. Figure 3 shows
it was developed overall
on the rela-
random sample of
tion of four movie
tenth choice
dataset.parameters
It also usedthough it was developed
a normalized on the
scale of Income andrandom sample
Votes with of to Rat
respect
one-tenth dataset. It also used a normalized scale of Income and Votes with respect to Rate
Score. Interestingly, Income of the movie is showing a random manner in relation
and Score. Interestingly, Income of the movie is showing a random manner in relation to all
other features.
other features.

Figure 3. Sample of Rating, Score, income, and votes.

Figure 3. Sample of Rating, Score, income, and votes.

Figure 4a,b represent the Score (x axis) and Rating (y axis) and show a scatter a
boxplot, respectively. Users’ choice (Rating) and experts’ ranking (Score) are negat
corelated (−0.03846622277552866). Figure 4a shows that the minimum Score is 70 (t
 Figure 3. Sample of Rating, Score, income, and votes.
Computers 2022, 11, 158 10 of 21

Figure 4a,b represent the Score (x axis) and Rating (y axis) and show a scatter and a
boxplot, respectively. Users’ choice (Rating) and experts’ ranking (Score) are negatively
Figure
corelated 4a,b represent the ScoreFigure
(−0.03846622277552866). (x axis)4aand Rating
shows (y axis)
that and show Score
the minimum a scatter and
is 70 (that is
a boxplot, respectively. Users’ choice (Rating) and experts’ ranking (Score) are negatively
the considered minimum accepted value for movie critic Metascore) and maximum 100, so
corelated (−0.03846622277552866). Figure 4a shows that the minimum Score is 70 (that is the
most of the metacore values are in the range of 80–95 and they are in small groups (that
considered minimum accepted value for movie critic Metascore) and maximum 100, so most
motivate us to apply
of the metacore values clustering techniques)
are in the range butthey
of 80–95 and veryarenear to each
in small groups other
(that with different
motivate
shapes. On the
us to apply other hand,
clustering it doesbut
techniques) notvery
clearly
nearfall in the
to each regressions,
other and we
with different do not
shapes. On know
how
the other hand, it does not clearly fall in the regressions, and we do not know how manyquad-
many groups can be made for classification. In the box diagram (Figure 4b), the
groups
ratic can of
values be boxes
made for
areclassification.
not on the same In the level,
box diagram
from 70 (Figure 4b),so
to 100, thethat
quadratic
we canvalues
imagine a
of boxes
curve in theare not on the
medium same
of the level,tofrom
boxes 70 toor
classify 100, so that into
separate we can
twoimagine
logicalagroups.
curve inHowever,
the
medium of the boxes to classify or separate into two logical groups. However,
the irregular imaginary curve does not generate any sense of classification. There are a the irregular
imaginary curve does not generate any sense of classification. There are a few boxes of
few boxes of very small shape that consist of very few observations, and you can imagine
very small shape that consist of very few observations, and you can imagine outliers of
outliers of the dataset.
the dataset.

(a) (b)
Figure 4.4.Score
Figure Scorevs.
vs.Rating.
Rating. (a) ScatterPlot;
(a) Scatter Plot;
(b)(b)
BoxBox
Plot. Plot.

6. 6. Machine Learning
Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence (AI) improves the ability of a machine to imitate a human
Artificial intelligence (AI) improves the ability of a machine to imitate a human and
and extended AI provides the learning capabilities of a machine called machine learning
extended AI provides
(ML). When a machine the learning
uses capabilities
more learner layersof a machine
(hidden called
layers) machine
in neural learning
networks, it is (ML).
When a deep
called machine uses(DL).
learning moreInlearner layers (hidden
this research, layers) in neural
we are concentrating on MLnetworks, it is called
of supervised,
semi-supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning. Supervised learning maps
input data to an output based on the predefined input–output mapping to participate in
machine learning systems. It works on labeled training data and is called a task-driven
learning system with classification and regression techniques. Unsupervised machine
learning is a data-driven approach that can analyze unlabeled data for clustering, feature
learning, dimensionality reduction, anomaly detection, etc. [57]. Semi-supervised learning
can work on labeled or unlabeled datasets for clustering and classification [59]. In the
real world, labeled data are limited and a semi-supervised model is more practical for
work on unlabeled datasets [61] for better performance. Reinforcement machine learning
allows its agents to learn from the environment. It is either a model-based or model-free
technique [61] with four elements: agent, environment, reward, and policy for controlling a
system (refer to Table 4).
Over the years, the data analytics technology ecosystem has integrated big data into
sophisticated computing platforms with analysis tools, techniques, and machine learning
algorithms [62]. Cognitive robotics, virtual agents, text analytics, and video analytics
applications improve the capabilities of machine learning frameworks. Structured real data
are important to train the machine, but internet pages have plenty of unstructured data.
Computers 2022, 11, 158 11 of 21

The proliferation of machine learning applications brings innovation in business and e-

commerce. Robotics is the common field of AI that reduces human efforts in industries [63].
AI chatbots provide instant routine services to its customers [64], financial organizations
use machine learning applications to enjoy competitive advantages [65], fraud detection
systems are used in financial organizations [66], risk assessment and mitigation recommen-
dation machine learning applications reduce risk in organizations [67], AI applications
reduce false-positive-cases in money laundering [68], price prediction [69] and derivative
price calculation [70] brings advantages in business. Item recommendation systems reduce
users’ efforts to search an item in online portals based on the location, time, and user
choice [71]. Features selection, feature engineering, component-based applications, context
awareness, and machine learning techniques are applied to the user interface to recom-
mend its customers/users in real time [72]. Cell mitosis detection system [73], features
selection for malignant mesothelioma [56], job recommendation systems [74], spam email
detection systems [75,76], malware and intrusion detection systems [76], cyber security
data analysis (Naïve Bayes, Random Forest, ANN, DBN, Decision Tree, SVM) and threat
prediction systems [77], user pattern detection [78], and social media recommendation
systems [79] applied machine learning to recommend their users. A book recommended
system uses features selection [80], a fraud detection system applied features selection
and feature engineering [81], and a music recommendation system [82] consists of feature
selection techniques and real-time user interface along with machine learning techniques.
Machine learning is common and most effective for automatic recommendation in online
applications. There are a few common machine learning modeling techniques.

6.1. Classification Algorithm

It is a supervised learning approach in computing and data science that is divided
into binary classification, multiclass classification, and multilevel classification.
Binary classification: The binary classification consists of two states of output, such
as YES or NO, TRUE or FALSE, HIGH or LOW [4], that can predict one of the two classes
only. In the real world, it is implemented to predict special types of observations from
the superset, which becomes two distinguished classes. It may be linearly separable or
non-linear separable to make two different classes.
Multiclass classification: It refers to the classification of more than two classes [4]
that has no expectation or principle of normal or abnormal outcomes. For example, it can
classify data according to the various network attacks of the NSL-KDD dataset [83].
Multilevel classification: It is the generalization concept of multiclass classification
where applications are associated with several classes or levels of a hierarchical structure.
An application can access simultaneously more than one class of a level. Advance machine
learning algorithms predict based on mutually non-exclusive classes or levels [84].
Rule-based classification: It is usable for any types of classification that can predict
by IF/THEN rules. Decision tree is one of the most common rule-based classification
techniques that support high level dimensionality and is easier for human beings to un-
derstand [85]. ONE-R [86] and Ripple Round Role (RIDOR) learner [87] generate rules for
prediction with rule-based classification.
Computers 2022, 11, 158 12 of 21

Table 4. Classification techniques.

Classifications Features/Characteristics and Applications

It is founded on Bayes’ theorem that is surprisingly good for independence assumption [88].
It is a supervised model that can implement robust prediction model construction and is
Naive
effective for noisy instances of a dataset [88].
Bayes (NB):
It can work with a small amount of training datasets compared to other sophisticated
classification algorithms [84].
It is generalized of Fisher’s linear discriminant that searches linear combinations of features
to separate data into two or more classes.
Linear discriminant analysis (LDA): It is developed by Bayes’ rules and fitting class conditional data density [84,87].
Standard LDA is usually suited for Gaussian density and applied to analysis of variance,
dimensionality reduction [84].
A statistical model used to solve classification issues by probabilistic theorem in machine
learning applications [89].
It is also known as a sigmoid function in mathematics.
Logistic regression (LR):
High dimensional dataset could be over fitted by it, but it is effective when the dataset is
linearly separable.
L1 and L2 regularizations can be implemented to overcome over-fitting issues [84].
It is an instance-based learning that is also called lazy learning algorithm or
non-generalizing learning technique [90].
K-nearest neighbors (KNN): Similarity measuring techniques (e.g., Euclidian distance calculation from a particular point)
are used to classify new data [84].
The output is biased by data quality and noise.
It is a supervised learning model that can be used for classification and regression [91].
It creates a hyper plane for high or infinite dimension of data.
Support vector machine (SVM)
It has distinguished applications based on the mathematical functions: sigmoid, radial bias
function, kernel, polynomial, and linear, etc. [84].
It is a non-parametric supervised learning approach [92] that can implement classifications
and regression applications [84].
Decision
IntrudTree [93] and BehavDT [94] are two recently proposed DT algorithms for cyber
tree (DT)
security analysis and behavior analysis, respectively, while ID3, CS4.5, and CART [95,96]
are commonly used DT algorithms.
It is an ensemble classification technique in machine learning and data science [97] that can
fit several parallel “ensemble trees” for simultaneous accessing [8], which is more effective
than a single tree structure.
Random Implementation of different sub-datasets on a tree of ensemble trees, minimize
forest (RF) over-fitting problems [84].
It combines bootstrap aggregation [98] and random feature selection [99] to establish a
series of trees (random forest tree) with several control variables.
It is more accurate and efficient than a single decision tree structure [100].
A serial ensemble classifier employed to reduce errors in classification that is developed by
Freund Y [101].
It brings poor classifiers together and improves quality of classification; it is also called meta
Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost)
learning algorithms.
It improves the performance of a base estimator [84] and a decision tree in binary
classification but it is sensitive with outlier and noisy data.
It is like a random forest that creates a final ensemble model based on the series of
individual models [97].
It uses gradient to reduce loss functions while neural networks use it for
Extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost)
weight optimization [4].
Second order gradient is used to deduct loss function and over fitting by
advanced regularization [4].
It is an iterative process to optimize objective function (computational burden in high
Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) dimensional optimization problems) [4].
It is applied in text classification applications and natural language processing algorithms [84].
Computers 2022, 11, 158 13 of 21

6.2. Regression
Regression analysis is a mathematical model that predicts a dependent variable (out-
come) based on a set of independent variable(s). This is a predictive analysis in artificial
intelligence and data science for forecasting, time series analysis, and finding the cause–
effect relationship between variables. It is also the process of fitting a group of points to
a graph so that it can be represented by a mathematical equation to predict any outcome
via given input(s). It supports getting significant factors of a dataset. Market analysis,
promotion, and price changes are most common in intelligent business analytics. It can
be classified based on the number of independent variables, shape of the curves, and
type of dependent variable. It has several variations, like linear and nonlinear regression,
or simple and multiple regression analysis. Linear regression is very measurable and
easy to understand but sensitive to outliers [102]. It is frequently employed in pricing
models, forecasting, and detecting financial performance that supports better decision
making. Regression predicts a continuous fact while classification predicts at class level
only. Polynomial regression (medicine, archaeology, environmental study), power regres-
sion (weather forecasting, physiotherapy, environmental study), exponential regression
(exploration, bacteria growth, population), and Gompertz regression are famous in ma-
chine learning applications. Multiple linear regression is deployed for energy performance
forecasting [103], exponential regression and the relevance vector machine are used to
estimate the manner of residual life [104], a design optimization technique proposed by
polynomial regression [105], and fuzzy polynomial regression is applied for feature selec-
tion and adjustment models [106]. Regression has variation between simple to complex
functions that consist of a set of variables and coefficient(s) and those are selected based on
the importance of accuracy [102]. During analysis (Section 4), we noticed that the ranking
of two methods is negatively correlated, but dispersion is too high in the scatter diagram
(Figure 4a). In this scenario, regression analysis will create high positive and negative errors
that do not make real sense of implementation.

6.3. Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning (RL) implements the Markov decision process [100], which is a
sequential decision making approach. RL has four elements: agents, environment, rewards,
and policy to implement in a model-based or model-free architecture. In this method of
machine learning, the training method uses rewarding points for desired behaviors and
punishing points for undesired behaviors. In this learning, the observer shall not be aware of
the actions, which means it is a trial and search method. There is a possibility of delaying the
process rewarding actions but this short-term sacrifice gives long-term improvements [106].
In the model-based technique, a machine learns from an environment-model and adopt its
learning with the results of trial [107], and model-free RL is not associated with a predefined
environment-model like Monte Carlo and Q deep network [108]. The aim of this research
is not aligned to the reinforcement learning because it does not learn anything from the
environment and does not need to update based on the future input.

6.4. Clustering
Clustering is an unsupervised machine learning technique that creates a group of
similar items from a large dataset where each group has a specific characteristic called a
cluster. Each cluster is separated from the others. It is a machine learning technique that
makes n numbers of categories without prior knowledge about the number of clusters
or characteristics of any cluster. It is used to identify the trend or pattern of the dataset,
image segmentation, biological grouping, similarity and dissimilarity identification, logical
partitioning, noise detection, visual object detection, dictionary learning, competitive
learning, etc. [109]. A data scientist can use various clustering methods based on the
requirements or outcomes of the task. Hierarchy clustering decomposes the dataset into
multiple levels that cannot correct enormous merges or splits [110]. It is applicable in the
hierarchy architecture of species or objects in agglomerative or divisive approaches. Density
Computers 2022, 11, 158 14 of 21

based clustering (DBSCAN) comprises the distance between the nearest points to make
a cluster by separating higher density points into lower density points. It is commonly
used in medical images for diagnosis [111]. It is not affected by outliers, and it is commonly
applied in noise detection or image segmentation [112]. Grid-based clusters summarize
all data into a grid and then merge grid cells for a cluster that is good for dealing with
massive datasets. Model-based clustering is derived from statistical learning methods or
neural network learning methods to generate required clusters. Partitioning clustering
methods use mean or medoid to identify the center of a mutually exclusive spherical
cluster and are good for small to medium datasets [110]. A distance-based clustering and
sensitive with outliers. K-means, k-medoids, CLARA, and CLARANS are the commonly
used partitioning clustering methods [113] and they are suitable for separate clusters with
a predefined cluster number [110]. An algorithm is selected based on the application and
time complexity. Time complexity of AI algorithms is influenced by number of instances (n),
number of attributes (m), and number iterations (i) [111]; for example, time complexity of
SVM is O(n2 ), DT is O(mn2 ), and DBN is O((n + m)i). We implemented k-mean clustering
and the time complexity of different clustering algorithms mentioned in Table 5 according
to Yash Dagli [110].

Table 5. Comparison of partition clustering.

Comparing Factors K-Means K-Medoids CLARA CLARANS

Implementation on practical
dataset of application Easier Acceptable Complicated Complicated
users’ opinions.
Appropriateness of the
algorithm based on the size of Smaller Smaller Larger Larger
the dataset.
Time complexity for n points,
k is clusters, s is the sample size, O(ink) O(k(n − k)2) O(k(s2 + n − k)) O(n2)
and i is iterations.
Accuracy of the clustering
Yes No No No
sensitive for outliers.

Density-based clustering algorithms create clusters depending on the density of the

dataset (the higher density region is separated from the lower density region) and is used
to select and remove noise from the dataset. A method that generates a hierarchy of
the clusters in either an agglomerative (bottom up) way or a divisive (top down) way
is called hierarchy clustering and forms a tree structure. Grid-based clusters summarize
all data into a grid and then merge grid cells to a cluster that is good for dealing with
massive datasets. Model-based clustering is derived by statistical learning methods or
neural network learning methods to generate clusters. K-means clustering is a simple
algorithm but fast and robust and provides good results when the data are well separated.
It calculates the square distance between the k numbers of centroids and an object; the
object is assigned to the cluster of the nearest centroid.

7. Result Analysis
This research is a new approach to IMDB movie data that fulfills the aim of the research.
We created six clusters of the movies that will support the user in selecting a movie form
the desired clusters. This research adds a new dimension to the study of IMDB movie
information. Table 6 differentiates our study with previous works with respect to objectives
of the study and data collection method.
Computers 2022, 11, 158 15 of 21

Table 6. Comparison on the studies of IMDB movie data.

Research on IMDB
Objective of the Research Data Extraction Outcomes
Movie Information
The comments are classified into positive and
Classification: Sentiment Used data repository:
negative classification by the Long Short-Term
S. M. Qaisar [16] analysis based on the text of created by Andrew
Memory (LSTM) classifier and showed that
the review comments. Maas [114]
the classification accuracy is 89.9%.
Classification: Sentiment Used data repository: the Compared and analyzed SVM machine with
Sourav M. and Tanupriya C. [20] analysis based on the text of “IMDB Large Movie Naïve Bayes and showed that SVM is more
the review comments. Review Dataset” accurate than Naïve Bayes.
Compared gradient boosting classifiers,
Classification: Sentiment
Used data repository: support vector machines (SVM), Naïve Bayes
Naeem et al. [19] analysis based on the text of
Kaggle.com classifier, and random forest and showed that
the review comments.
SVM is better than any other methods.
Created different clusters based on the rating
Clustering: Based on the on Used data repository: the of the movies with respect to release year,
Aditya TS et al. [22] rating with respect to years, Movie Database on Facebook likes, etc., that support the user to
Facebook likes, and budget. kaggle.com select a popular movie from a
particular domain.
Used data repository: the Created different clusters based on the genre
Clustering: Based on the
Hasan B. and Serdar K. [21] “IMDB Large Movie of the movies that supports the user to select a
genre of the movies.
Review Dataset” popular movie from a particular genre.
Our study validates the scoring systems and
Clustering: Based on the Web-scraped
Our study supports the user to make faster decision
Metascore and Rating. up-to-date data
based on the outcome of both scoring systems.

Within Cluster Sum of Square (WCSS) is the method for cluster generating that is
applied to develop the elbow diagram (Figure 5i). It shows the possible number of clusters
(1 to 10) on the x axis and the sum of the square distance of the class elements on the y axis.
The elbow function is developed based on the Rating and Score fields of the dataset. Cluster
numbers 3 to 6 (Figure 5i) fall in the elbow part of the curve, so these are logical, reasonable,
and acceptable cluster numbers for this dataset. Before cluster number 3 and after cluster
number 6, the curve sharply changes and there are no distinguished remarkable points.
Cluster number 3 and cluster number 6 are remarkable points to consider (ignore fraction
to make a cluster). We found that six clusters are most suitable to see the relationship
between Score and Rating (Figure 5ii). It is noticeable that cluster ‘b’ and cluster ‘e’ have a
more homogeneous (comparatively less distance among the points of the cluster) bond,
but cluster ‘a’ and cluster ‘d’ have a more heterogenous (more distance between the points
of two cluster) bond. For movie data, we can consider that Metascore is strongly opposite to
Rating between cluster ‘a’ and cluster ‘d’, while there is a mostly similar understanding
between cluster ‘b’ and cluster ‘e’.
The x axis of Figure 5ii represents Score, and Rating is represented on the y axis to form
six clusters that are indicated by a, b, c, d, e, and f. Clusters are formed by the points that
are nearest (Euclidian distance) to the centroid. For three cluster modeling, the data are
clustered into three groups where the common point of these clusters is in the center of
the dataset. Each cluster spreads at a 120-degree angle (approximately) for each that does
not make good sense according to Figure 5ii (six clusters model), group ‘e’ represents the
movies that have a balanced ratio of Metascore and Ratings compared to the other clusters.
Cluster ‘c’ has a comparatively high Metascore with a minimum user Rating, while cluster
‘a’ achieves the highest user Rating and a standard Metascore of 85–95. Cluster ‘d’ and
cluster ‘e’ have the same user rating but there is a significant gap in the movie critic score.
Cluster ‘b’ has the lowest ranks for both measures among the clusters. Here, cluster ‘e’ is
the optimal one among the six clusters to select a movie with minimum risk.
 relationship between Score and Rating (Figure 5ii). It is noticeable that cluster ‘b’ and clus-
ter ‘e’ have a more homogeneous (comparatively less distance among the points of the
cluster) bond, but cluster ‘a’ and cluster ‘d’ have a more heterogenous (more distance be-
tween the points of two cluster) bond. For movie data, we can consider that Metascore is
Computers 2022, 11, 158
strongly opposite to Rating between cluster ‘a’ and cluster ‘d’, while there is a mostly sim-
16 of 21
ilar understanding between cluster ‘b’ and cluster ‘e’.

(i) (ii)

Figure 5. (i) The elbow method and (ii) the clustering model.

8. Conclusions and Future

Data collection, data analysis, and implementation of k-means clustering are the three
major phases of this study that is founded on web-scraping movie data. This work will
motivate researchers to work on web-scraped data rather than relay a third party backdated
dataset. “Grey area” web-scraping will reduce the limitation of research data. This paper
provides guidelines for data science research with three main activities: data scrapping,
data analysis, followed by machine learning application that could be extended in any
domain. Researchers and experts can reduce dimensionality reduction and cleansing
activities using web-scraping data rather than third party datasets.
We extracted the data of 1000 movies that are in the top of the rating list. Data were
cleaned up by removing records that had ambiguous or null value. Out of 1000 records, we
got 424 as a complete dataset that was applied in statistical analysis and to the k-means
clustering model. The Jupyter Notebook of Python on the Anaconda platform were used in all
phases of the research. We performed statistical analysis and found that there is a negative
correlation between Metascore and Rating that is not an ordinary expectation (people expect
that a good movie will get good rankings for both cases), and it justified the biasness (both
ratings have influential factors that can bias the scoring) statement of Quora [14]. We know
that high rank is a good motivating factor in the online world and that new users look to
it to select a movie for entertainment. A user can accept any or both recommendations,
but when both rankings show a good score, it definitely adds more value to a product.
This study clearly created the clusters so that users can select better movies, researchers
can find gaps between the two feedback systems, and movie critics can revise the factors
of Metascoring. Movie producers can implement the study for better decision making to
achieve their business goals. So, this study supports IMDB users, movie producers, and
movie critics and experts besides supporting computing researchers. This will motivate
users to justify a score with another type of scoring to improve the accuracy of the decision.
The movie critics can review their scoring parameters so that it can reduce the distance to
users’ rankings. Movie makers can decide to produce a movie that can enhance business
goals. A researcher can show interest in real time data rather than the uses of the back
dated dataset. Multi-criteria decision making applications can utilize multiple scoring
systems for decision making. It is essential for smart recommendation systems where more
parameters are required to make the decision.
Limitation: This research extracted information of a limited set of movies and all movies
are at the top of user rating lists. A researcher can extract data for all movies or randomly
selected movies. There are more influential factors of movie records such as genre of a
movie, actors of the movie, and production time. Moreover, there is no information about
the user who is rating since each user is influenced by individual factors such as age, sex,
Computers 2022, 11, 158 17 of 21

language, and culture, etc. We applied k-means clustering without removing outliers that
fulfill our objective.
Future work and recommendation: In the near future, we are going to apply k-means and
k-medoids clustering for each of the major genres from the IMDB movie list. There is an
adequate scope for extending the research to develop a supervised and an unsupervised
model that will help users and move producers in decision making. There is a popularity
changing pattern with respect to the movie genre and movie popularity. This movie data
could be helpful for multi-criteria decision making and problem solving in statistics and AI.
The deep learning model of Kamran et al. [115] supports considering multiple vectors for
automatic decision making with good accuracy. We will extend our study for multilayer
deep learning algorithms to consider all influential factors (Metascore, User Ratings, Votes,
Gross Income) for supervised modeling based on the research of Kamran et al. [115]. This
idea could extend to validating any recommendation system where multiple online ratings
exist for a product or service.

Supplementary Materials: The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https:
//www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/computers11110158/s1, Table S1: Complete Dataset.
Author Contributions: K.U.S. and M.S. contributed to the investigation and project administration.
R.H. contributed to the supervision. S.M. contributed to the visualization. A.A. and S.H. contributed
to the resources and writing—review and editing. K.U.S. and A.D. contributed to the collected
data and conducted the pre-processing of the input data. All authors have read and agreed to the
published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: The data presented in this study are available in supplementary
material here.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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