Performance comparison of neural and non-neural approaches to session-based recommendation

The benefits of neural approaches are undisputed in many application areas. However, today's research practice in applied machine learning---where researchers often use a variety of baselines, datasets, and evaluation procedures---can make it difficult to understand how much progress is actually achieved through novel technical approaches. In this work, we focus on the fast-developing area of session-based recommendation and aim to contribute to a better understanding of what represents the state-of-the-art.