Netflix’s second $1 Million prize Contest will have scientists take on the even more difficult problem of recommending movies for customers that rate few movies, and this time will use demographic and behavioral data to predict customer rentals.
“The new data set, providing more than 100 million data points, will include, among other things, information about renters’ ages, genders, ZIP codes, genre ratings and previously chosen movies. As with the first Netflix Prize, all data provided is anonymous and cannot be associated with a specific Netflix member.”
The second Netflix $1 Million prize will be broken into two awards, with the leading team at 6 months and 18 months winning a $500,000 progress prizes.
While the first prize focused on customers that rated more than 50 movies, the second contest will enable Netflix to more accurately recommend movies to customers that are just getting started or rate movies infrequently.
More information will be available on the Netflix Prize website soon.
Here's an interesting interview with the "Pragmatic" laymen sub-team that I published (if the URL link below is missing, find it on my Predictive Analytics World blog).
Casual Rocket Scientists:
An Interview with a Layman Leading the Netflix Prize, Martin Chabbert
A couple of non-analytical laymen launched a mission to win the Netflix Prize, arguably the most high profile analytical competition to date. And these "casual part-timers" have succeeded - they compose one of three teams that together won the Prize. Martin Chabbert provides a tell-all interview, advocating adept engineering over innovative science. Their work and this competition as a whole are so cutting-edge, they make the space race look like good ol' "Flash Gordon".
For the full article, see:
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/layman-netflix-leader.php
Posted by: Eric Siegel, Ph.D. | September 21, 2009 at 10:17 PM
When are they going to let me rate movies with half stars? It's stupid for them to predict my rating as 3.2 if i can only rate it 3 or 4. And wouldn't it help them sinceIi would be giving them more accurate info?
Posted by: Luis | September 22, 2009 at 01:36 AM
Have you all seen this story on boing boing about the unintended consequences of the second challenge?
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/22/netflix-is-about-to.html
Posted by: dan gillotte | September 22, 2009 at 02:45 PM