Communications of the ACM
Netflix Awards $1 Million Prize and Starts a New Contest
Netflix, the movie rental company, has decided its million-dollar-prize competition was such a good investment that it is planning another one.
The company’s challenge, begun in October 2006, was both geeky and formidable: come up with a recommendation software that could do a better job accurately predicting the movies customers would like than Netflix’s in-house software, Cinematch. To qualify for the prize, entries had to be at least 10 percent better than Cinematch.
The winner, formally announced Monday morning, is a seven-person team of statisticians, machine-learning experts and computer engineers from the United States, Austria, Canada and Israel. The multinational team calls itself BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos.
The payoff for Netflix? “Accurately predicting the movies Netflix members will love is a key component of our service,” said Neil Hunt, chief product officer.
From The New York Times
View Full Article
No entries found