  We propose a novel sparse preference learning/ranking algorithm. Our
algorithm approximates the true utility function by a weighted sum of basis
functions using the squared loss on pairs of data points, and is a
generalization of the kernel matching pursuit method. It can operate both in a
supervised and a semi-supervised setting and allows efficient search for
multiple, near-optimal solutions. Furthermore, we describe the extension of the
algorithm suitable for combined ranking and regression tasks. In our
experiments we demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms several
state-of-the-art learning methods when taking into account unlabeled data and
performs comparably in a supervised learning scenario, while providing sparser
solutions.
