http://www.netflixprize.com/leaderboard
Check out the leaderboard. The recent progress by the top four teams has been impressive recently.
BellKor should win this within 2 months. They also showcase a key point in their blog. To achieve practical results you don’t need a crazy model with a lot of predictors.
I’ve yet to figure out why they spend $1,000,000 on this algorithm and/or the press/buzz in generated. Their own algos and business rules do almost as well as this already. But, hey, if you have $1,000,000 laying around to give to some smart researchers, great!
~R
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