Slashdot Mirror
Netflix Prize Competitor Already Beats Netflix
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."
Quite a few teams have beaten the Cinematch engine, but not by the required 10% for the prize. The submission is in error. They also haven't won the 1% Progress prize yet, but they're very very close.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
although yes they have "beatten netflix", they haven't won the prize yet.
they have about a 1% improvement on the netflix algorithm, but the prize is for 10%. they are the frontrunner for the progress prize, though, being the people who are the closest to the mark after a year (i think).
on top of that, netflix has been doing improvements on their own code in the meantime, and its been looking like around a 1% improvement, also.
Quebec outlaws most contests by requiring companies offering contests to have a head office or place of business in Quebec. No need to resort to conspiracy theories, it's just good business to make them ineligible due to their laws.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
From the FAQ: "Most of those countries appear are on the U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control's list of embargoed counties for which we cannot provide economic assistance. If this list changes, we'll post a change to the rules and let you know. Quebec has other reasons." Here's why Quebec is on the list.
"For every right, an equal responsibility..."
iirc Quebec has very stringent rules on contests and lotteries and is usually excluded from international contests because of the prohibitive effort required to comply.
and no teeth.
it takes all of a few seconds to "register a team" I did it a few days ago just to have a peek at the test data.
Collector's Edition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_Wars/ is the thing that comes to my mind... Blowing up fossils seems like an artificial barrier to me. :-)
It's a pretty clear distinction. This is a prize.