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