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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."
the power of prizes to accelerate progress
Hmm...In that case, I'm offering $1000 USD to the person or group that can find me the perfect girlfriend!
I think this demonstrates how important "many eyeballs" are in problem solving. Intelligent people "who have been attacking the problem for 15 years" can still fail to see an "obvious" solution. I shudder at how many scientific fields probably have obvious solutions that aren't being found because only a small cadre of people have been exposed to the problem. I also shudder at people who artificially set up barriers to understanding their own fields, in order to protect their own egos. The attitude of "journal articles need to be cryptic or they must not be important" needs to go.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
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?
This shows that greed can be used in a positive way.
That is all I have to say, anyone else have anything to add?
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.
Sometimes one person with a different perspective on a problem can see something that a groups of "experts" had never thought of, or had discounted because they assumed it wouldn't work.
That's why a fresh perspective on a problem can be quite enlightening, and why I tend to go ask other programmers for their ideas/comments when I get stuck. I don't know everything, and I sometimes make stupid assumptions or forget to consider certain technquies. No group is immune from this.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I have perfected the perfect movie recommendation mechanism. It's called a "friend."
I hold a patent on the idea, and I've copyrighted the statement "hey, I saw this movie you'd like."
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Maybe he is the YZ in WXYZ.
You know, I've never seen recommendation applications worth much of anything. Ringo was okay, until M$ turned it into Firefly, which died in 1999(?). It will be interesting if this turns out well, or if it turns out like TiVO, which in Patton Oswalt's words, is like "working with a retarded kid." "No, TiVo, NO! Westerns aren't cartoons! / But you like horsies! Liar!"
"Tu fui, ego eris" - Virgil
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.
I think it also demonstrates how the oft-used mantra of "if it needs to be done, it will be done" doesn't always work without some incentive. One of the hurdles of OSS is that the only things that get worked on are the things that people want to work on. The love of developing software can only get you so far (and wow, has it gotten us far). But for some things to advance, it will need financial backing. It's a prickly problem for the OSS community.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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
I've been selling technology for almost two decades and one thing that I see over and over is that internal IT departments either a.) vastly overestimate their abilities b.) prevent introduction of outside techology providers for political reasons or c.) both. There are several companies where the CIO told me "oh, we're already building that in-house. it will be live next quarter" and years later they still have not successfully implemented that technology. Kudos to Netflix for acknowledging that somebody outside their company might be able to do it better. At most companies, the CIO would have never let this happen and/or the CEO wouldn't have the business sense to challenge internal assumptions.
WXYZConsulting.com registered to a Yi Zhang, eh? Probably co-founded it with Wilfred Xylem. Sounds fishy to me...
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
That's why a fresh perspective on a problem can be quite enlightening, and why I tend to go ask other programmers for their ideas/comments when I get stuck. I don't know everything, and I sometimes make stupid assumptions or forget to consider certain technquies. No group is immune from this.
Bah, every time I ask other programmers for input, their ideas are always stupid, my ideas are much better...
The RMSE score (lower is better) currently posted by wxyzconsulting.com (0.9430) does indeed beat the CineMatch score (0.9514), which is almost good enough to qualify for the Progress Prize 2007 (0.9419 required), but not close to winning the Grand Prize (0.8563 required), so don't assume that this story means that the contest is over!
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
At most companies, the CIO would not let it happen because of the political fall-out that woudl ensue, not because they wouldn't recognize that other people have good ideas as well.
..
The fact that Netflix is allowing customer data out of their control (albiet sanitized data) is a major step that many company's would never take out of reasons not related to the technology at all.
And most CEO's don't challenge those internal assumptions not because of a lack of business sense, but again, because of political savy. The higher you go in a company, the greater the importance of poltiical acumen. It's not even mostly about business. It's mostly about political positioning.
Folks can argue all day long that it SHOULDN'T be about that, but in the real world it is. And frankly, good CEO's and good CIO's need to survive year to year too .
One important thing to keep in mind is how the Progress Prize works. The minimum for it is a 1% improvement over last years best score. However, the prize doesn't just go to the first to reach that 1%. It goes to the best algorithm that contest year that beats 1%. So if someone posts a 1% solution now and then in 11 months another posts a 2%, the 2% solution gets the prize.
Due to this, there's a big incentive NOT to post any results until near the end of the contest year, unless your results qualify you for the grand prize. Even then, there is a 30 day window in which other people (or you) can beat your results.
I'm tired of people not realizing that "Prizes" are really just Patronage in desguise. I'm not saying Patronage is a bad thing... far from it. But the idea that Prizes are somehow working shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone with knowledge of 15th century aristocracy.
Pay the people who do the work, don't get people to work for pay.
...you might just win yourself a relationship so 'special' that 90% of all couples in America share. You'll buy her jewelry and allow her to spend your money on frivolous trifles, and she in turn will allow you to stick your penis in her vagina. When all else fails, resort to mediocrity!
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
It's a pretty clear distinction. This is a prize.
Looks like they already gave away the Grand Prize to "The Thought Gang." This just appeared on the site within the last hour.
And I just finished downloading the dataset... jesus.
# Erik