

The Napolean Dynamite Problem (2008) - beerglass
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

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testrun
In the end the prize was won and never implemented by Netflix.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanholiday/2012/04/16/what-
the-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanholiday/2012/04/16/what-the-
failed-1m-netflix-prize-tells-us-about-business-advice/)

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lutusp
> The Napolean Dynamite Problem

1\. It's "Napoleon". Copy, paste would have prevented this error.

2\. For some reason, an obvious issue is left out of the article -- and that
issue is how much of movie ratings constitutes entropy, meaningless noise from
which no pattern can be extracted, and how much constitutes actual data that
an algorithm might accurately model and predict.

Those who doubt the role of entropy should try compressing the output of a
pseudorandom number generator. If the PNG is any good, the compressed output
will be larger than its input, implying high entropy. In fact, compressing the
predictions of Netflix customers would be a good starting point in an
algorithm design -- see whether there are any patterns available to exploit.

3\. Along with Napoleon Dynamite on the list of hard-to-predict movies, Repo
Man and Eraserhead should be considered -- they're also very hard to
categorize.

