Netflix Prize Contest Ends, Down To the Wire

suraj.sun updates us on the Netflix Prize now that the competition has officially closed. We discussed the new leader with one day to go in the contest: The Ensemble, taking the lead from long-time leader BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, the first contestant to submit an entry that broke the 10% barrier. In the contest's final day, BellKor re-took the lead with 20 minutes to go, then The Ensemble apparently pulled a Michael Phelps with 4 minutes to go, squeaking ahead by 0.01%. At least so the leaderboard claims — but those numbers are posted by the competing teams. The NY Times reports that an official winner will not be named until September — Netflix needs that much time to pore through the complex entries and read the code. Netflix contacted BellKor on Sunday to tell them the team remained in first place; The Ensemble has had no such notification.

Comments

I'll tell you how they did it

[Anonymous Coward]

They realized that all movies starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson were actually the same movie. The compression on that alone was enough.

Re:I'll tell you how they did it

[Knackered]

Don't forget Adam Sandler movies.

Damn you, I was trying to.

Re:Pulled a Michael Phelps?

[Dahamma]

No, they lost to a German wearing a polyurethane suit and then declared they wouldn't race any more until the suits are banned.