Bayesian Filters Predict Sundance

JohnGrahamCumming writes "The LA Times reports on a company's use of Bayesian filtering to predict the winners at the Sundance Film Festival. They use a modified POPFile email filter and claim an 81% success rate."

Comments

It goes like this:

[BTO]

Gay = +100%

Filter Mods

[Anonymous Coward]

Angsty +2
Depressing +2
Happy or Inspirational -1
Featuring charaters of a marginalized societal group +10
Featuring charaters of a majority societal group -10
Making those majority characters feel guilty +20
Political Agenda +10
Social Agenda +10
Leftist Social & Political Agenda +50
Non-acting acting +3
Use of black and white film +1
Sense of Humor -5
Comedy film -100
Intellectual +1
Pseudo-intellectual +30
Director dresses in all black +4
Actors dress in all black +10
Actors dress in all black and do interpretive dance to Phillip Glass music while speaking German backwards +20
Audience participates and dances with the actors in above scenario +1000
Would actually generate box office revenue -100
Good movie that would appeal to more than a niche audience -20

Fit your stereotype?

[246o1]

From TFA (words in the description that help or hurt it): "Golden: academic, accomplished, bedroom, complex, dialogue, dream, death, focus, girl, human, high, journey, love, mother, narrative, romance, relationship, superbly, sex, ultimately. Kiss of death: Africa, America, American, beautiful, black, best, emotional, fascinating, great, inspired, lake, new, riveting, Sundance, sexy, story, subtitles, truth, vision, world." So, they want complex, academic films about girl-mother relationships with a strong narrative of romance and sex. Nothing about beautiful black people in Africa or America with any sort of interest in visions, truth, or the world, especially if said black people are sexy and live near a great, nay, the best lake.

Bayesian for Slashdot

[bhima]

I've been thinking about this for a while...

Someone should develop a client side Bayesian Filter / Moderation system for Slashdot.

Think about it...

A sizable portion of people around here are not consistantly assholes so it doesn't really make sense to add them to a "foe" list.
Frequently things are in strange topics so it doesn't make sense to ignore whole topics.
Not all new members are trolls so modding all new members down doesn't make sense either.
And the current moderation system is subjected to other people's current peeves and political leanings.

And please don't tell me to do it, I'm an embedded developer not a web developer... I have no idea where to even begin with it.

Re:Bayesian for Slashdot

[Billosaur]

And the current moderation system is subjected to other people's current peeves and political leanings.

Which is what makes it so much fun!

Seriously, its wonderful that Bayesian filters are useful, but why put blinders on? Slashdot would simply cease to be interesting if you could will away anything you didn't like. Intelligent discourse requires an airing of all sides of an issue and theoretically this can lead to consensus building, if the best parts of all ideas are combined. Of course you're going to get people with very little to say, or very little between the ears, muddying the waters -- the challenge is to take the disparate elements and meld them to something coherent. Superfluous elements will be winnowed out and hopefully the end product is something most people can agree on.

Of course this is Slashdot, the Internet equivalent of a bar brawl. The rough-and-tumble of this kind of fourm is what keeps it interesting and more importantly, as much as we are infuriated by those who don't agree with us, makes us think.

Re:Fuck films...

[DeveloperAdvantage]

There are many examples of using statistics and artificial intelligence in finance (go google), including some applications to predict stock prices. Even a decade ago, books like "Neural Networks in Finance and Investing" and "Artificial Intelligence in the Capital Markets" were already published, along with hordes of books on statistics in finance (think about what Quants do).

Of course, I don't think we can yet predict stock prices with the same 81% accuracy as in this article. And, if anyone could, they would be wise to keep it to themselves.

An algorithm that works

[digitaldc]

So, a company claims that their product (or in this case; algorithm) is good?

Well according to their algorithm, certain words such as Africa, America, American, beautiful, black, best, emotional, fascinating, great, inspired, lake, new, riveting, Sundance, sexy, story, subtitles, truth, vision, world should never be used.

My 'kiss of death' film would be:

"The Beautiful Lake: An African Vision of the World"

Description: An emotional story of truth about a man from Africa who comes to America to find himself. Being a skilled carpenter, he builds a new home which is set on a beautiful lake. As we hear anectdotes of his vision of truth, a fascinating story emerges. We also learn about his riveting and inspired adventure to his new home, and we see how it impacts his once black view of the world. A great film for any Sundance enthusiast! (with sexy subtitles)

It is almost guaranteed to bomb, before anyone even sees it!

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