Psychologist Beating Math Nerds in Race to Netflix Prize

s1d writes "An almost-anonymous British psychologist named Gavin Potter has suddenly risen to the top of the Netflix prize charts. With his very first attempt, he got a score which took the BellKor team seven months to reach. Currently at a score of 8.07, he has only five teams ahead of him now in the race for the ultimate Netflix algorithm. 'Potter says his anonymity is mostly accidental. He started that way and didn't come out into the open until after Wired found him. "I guess I didn't think it was worth putting up a link until I had got somewhere," he says, adding that he'd been seriously posting under the name of his venture capital and consulting firm, Mathematical Capital, for two months before launching "Just a guy." When he started competing, he posted to his blog: "Decided to take the Netflix Prize seriously. Looks kind of fun. Not sure where I will get to as I am not an academic or a mathematician. However, being an unemployed psychologist I do have a bit of time."'"

Comments

What's the point?

[causality]

Is there some merit to this story other than "your sterotypes can be wrong", which is itself cliche enough to be considered a stereotype in its own right? I like Henry David Thoreau's explanation of such trivia:

And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure -- news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy.

And yes, I have karma to burn. Yes I do.

Interdiscplinary approach

[oceaniv]

The topic is incredibly fascinating. And just a thought, up to 5 centuries ago "scientists" were incredibly versatile people, with mastery over a few fields at a time... A lot of people argue that this was out of necessity, but could the versatility have been important development of multiple renaissances (In Greece, East/West Asia, and Europe)? And could the bottleneck specialization of fields that has occurred in the past three centuries simply be period of transition/stifling new ways of thinking? Could the emergence interdisciplinary experts lead to another 'renaissance' of sorts?

Re:Interdiscplinary approach

[Metasquares]

I think so.

Re:Interdiscplinary approach

[Kenshin]

See, I hate this current mode of profession.

I work for a small company. My current job isn't stable, and doesn't pay well, so I'm taking an IT course so I can land a (hopefully) stable job/career.

However... in my current job I wear all kinds of hats. Server's down? I'll fix it. Marketing materials need to be designed? I'll do it. Proposal needs to be edited? I'm there. Computer needs more RAM? I'll install it. Photo of product needs to be masked-out? Done. Need to do some research? I'll get on it.

The kind of job I'm being trained for... I'll be stuck on the straight and narrow, handling one sort of task. When companies want an IT guy, they want an IT guy. I don't know how I'll be able to handle that. I LIKE having different responsibilities. I don't want to be one guy on an org chart with a specified duty.

Blah. I really went on a tangent there...

Thinking about how people shop

[GregPK]

My extensive retail experience says people like to shop by the following methods. Ratings, Genre, Alphabet.

So, if I was to setup a movie viewing for them. I'd setup something along the lines of a Genre, rating(R,PG-13,G), Alphabet.

It's kind of a takeoff on my video game organization method that increases sales of video games by 30 percent. I called it ABSRG short for Alphabetize By Section(4 foot section), Rating(M on top T in the middle and E towards the bottom.), Genre(Sports, driving, shoot em up). Please note, this cannot be patented, I already let it go out for more than a year(Started in 1998)and I have the pictures and time notes to prove it.

That's true

[Crazy Taco]

Very few psych majors do psych professional. I have a BA from U. of Houston, which I have used to do tech support and sales for a software company, and developed my own FPS as a solo project.

I've also found this to be true. Lol, I actually knew people in college that did nothing but program computers in their spare time, and took psych because it was easy, wouldn't distract them and gave them more time to do the programming they wanted. They didn't ever expect to practice psych.

Free Idea

[Speare]

Okay, I'm not trying for this prize, but there's one thing about Netflix "recommendations" that bugs me so I'm throwing out this complete freebie of an idea. If it helps someone get a 0.001% improvement to add this ONE little additional check, great.

I am learning Japanese. I have been watching several hundred Japanese-language movies for the past couple years. I don't watch movies in Greek, Spanish, Turkish, Farsi, Italian, Russian, German, or Hebrew. I did watch Amelie four years ago but that doesn't mean I love French movies. Most of my recommendations are for foreign films, but only a small fraction of those recommendations are for Japanese movies.

Apparently, Netflix doesn't have a column in their database saying WHAT language a movie uses principally, it just has a flag saying it is not English. It's the only explanation I can see for not checking for such a strong correlation. I admit, I might not be sharing the experience of the most common movie-renting drone in the bunch, but I doubt I'm the only person who has such a lopsided taste in movies. If the language (or alternate soundtrack languages) ARE known in the database, please see if the renter has a bias for movies in a particular language.

And?

[Secret Rabbit]

There a joke that I heard (that's actually pretty much true):

A Physicist goes to a Mathematician for advise on solving a Differential Equation. The Physicist explains this and writes the equation on a Blackboard. The Mathematician stares at the equation for more than half an hour. Finally, he says, "Yes, it has a solution."

Basically, the Maths (even applied) are about details and considering them *very* carefully. With this in mind, is it any surprise that they are somewhat "slow"? Especially when they are starting from scratch within the problem domain?