A $1 million prize to improve Netflix’s movie recommendation algorithm went down to the wire. After three years of work, the winner won by 10 minutes.
The goal of the Netflix Prize, announced in 2006, was to improve the Web site’s ability to predict which movies customers will like by 10%. From a field of thousands of entrants, two teams completed this goal in June. The group calling itself BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos — a joint effort by several of the top competitors — was declared the winner, since it was the first to achieve a 10.06% improvement in movie predicting.
(from BusinessWeek)
Along the way, the team uncovered some interesting facts about how users rate particular movies. Worth a read.