Netflix Prize Competitor Already Beats Netflix

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Monday October 9, 2006 @03:14AM from the no-really-drop-dead-gorgeous-is-funny dept.

Baldrson writes "Within the first week of the announcement of The Netflix Prize a team has already beaten Netflix's own movie recommendation algorithm. This is pretty impressive given the previously quoted researcher who said: 'You're competing with 15 years of really smart people banging away at the problem.' The team is WXYZConsulting.com apparently registered by a data mining professor named Yi Zhang. Congratulations are in order for Netflix and Prof. Zhang's team who are demonstrating, yet again, the power of prizes to accelerate progress."

2 of 174 comments (clear)

banned in Quebec by welcher · 2006-10-09 03:27 · Score: 5, Funny

Looking in the competition rules, I was surpised to see that:

Residents of the province of Quebec in Canada are ineligible to participate. Residents of Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Sudan are also ineligible to participate.

Is Quebec the next target for regime change?
IMDB by British · 2006-10-09 04:09 · Score: 5, Funny

IMDB's recommendation system for movies is so bad it's funny in it's own right. You could look up a science fiction movie, and it would recommend a head cleaner cassette for a Betamax VCR.