

Why Netflix Never Implemented the Million Dollar Winning Algorithm - eplanit
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20120409/03412518422/why-netflix-never-implemented-algorithm-that-won-netflix-1-million-challenge.shtml

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bambax
Number of words from the original Netflix blog post (quotes): 380.

Number of words from the OP: 374.

What's worse, the OP is just paraphrasing the original post and not
challenging it one bit. I dispute the fact that users' preferences or viewing
strategy are different for DVD as for streaming.

Sure, one can "try" more with streaming, and the opportunity cost of trying is
a little less for streaming than it is for DVDs -- for DVDs, renting a "bad"
movie takes the place of a good one in my cue, whereas trying a streaming show
costs me nothing but my time.

But here's the thing, though: the cost of my time stays the same. I hate
spending ten or twenty minutes watching something that turns out uninteresting
(to me); it upsets me so much that the mood is ruined and often I just go do
something else.

I love Netflix for the quality of its recommendation system (unparalleled, in
my experience); it's an incredible moment when I watch something I would never
have found on my own, that I truly enjoy.

It would be a shame if Netflix stopped regarding this as their most precious
asset.

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dmk23
This is a general problem with these "machine learning contests" for complex
online learning systems.

There is no _realistic_ way to translate all the complexity of ML production
environment into a neatly packaged problem for contestants. You have to cut
down dataset size, drops features, simplify targets and trivialize the
implementation requirements (computational complexity, prediction latency,
engineering cost). Not to mention that you have to expend significant effort
to prepare / normalize / sanitize your dataset and even then you could still
get hit with a privacy lawsuit, just like Netflix did.

The result of the contest at best is a set of "ideas" that you have to
review/study before starting your own implementation / experimentation from
scratch. Did Netflix prize pay for its cost? Perhaps the biggest benefit was
generating publicity and helping with data scientist recruiting.

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JoachimSchipper
This is blatant blogspam. Go read the Netflix page at
[http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/04/netflix-
recommendations-...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/04/netflix-
recommendations-beyond-5-stars.html) instead, discussion at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3810058>.

