[Kc] meeting Tuesday Oct 10 2006

[Garrett Goebel]

On Oct 5, 2006, at 9:35 AM, Matthew Wilson wrote:

> I don't know if I'll be able to join your team since I'm pretty far  
> along with my efforts in research and implementation, and I have a  
> lot of confidence in the overall approach I'm taking.  I'll be glad  
> to compare notes though.  Depending on how things go in the next  
> few days, I'll know just how much computing power I will be  
> needing, so I may be looking for minority-share team members.
>
>
> Remember, once someone passes the 0.8563 mark (and I do believe it  
> will happen in the next few weeks), everyone else will have 30 days  
> to match/beat their progress before a winner is examined/judged/ 
> declared.
>

I'm not so sure it'll be beaten. There has yet to be an entry on the  
leaderboard that matches Cinematch...

I too would like to have done a more "people with similar tastes"  
style ratings projection, but the data set of ~100 million ratings  
using 480,000 unique customer id's... doesn't lend itself very well  
to that approach.

That and I somehow doubt that the people at Netflix are incompetent.  
I.e., they say that there are a lot of approaches that they aren't  
using. But that doesn't mean that they haven't explored and rejected  
those routes.

Myself, I've dumped the training set data into a database. And am  
trying to figure out the right questions to ask...

I do think someone will get the $50,000 progress prize. But I also  
doubt that it'll be me. I expect a team strong in mathematics and  
statistics will find a way to finesse small improvements on  
Cinematch. Enough to justify the progress bounty.

I wish there was more documentation on the approach Cinematch takes  
and the alternative approaches. The progress bounty might be had by  
anyone who stumbles upon a better balance of approaches, but I doubt  
anyone will manage the million dollar prize without a novel approach.

cheers,

Garrett