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Netflix Prize: Numerati go mainstream

Posted by: Stephen Baker on September 22

I was in the San Rafael (Calif) offices of Fair Isaac nearly three years ago, interviewing the financial quants there for the Numerati. Suddenly, there was a commotion. News had just arrived that Netflix would be sharing loads of anonymous behavioral data, and offering $1 million to anyone who could improve the accuracy of their movie recommendations by 10%.

People at Fair Isaac were excited. They didn’t care about the $1 million. They just wanted to get their hands on all that data. It seemed to me that I had a window into a fascinating niche of the Numerati world.

Fast forward to this morning. I walk over the the sumptuous Four Season’s Hotel, on E. 57th Street, where loads of journalists, including the Times and the Journal and AP, are squeezed into a ballroom for the announcement of the Netflix winners. My read: What seemed like a niche three years ago, the crunching of our behavioral data—the mathematical modeling of humanity—is now mainstream. They also announced that a second Netflix prize will soon be announced. Here’s my account on BusinessWeek.com.

I called up Darren Vengroff. He’s the chief scientist at RichRelevance, a recommendation start-up I’ve written about before. He told me that the upcoming Netflix Prize II, which will include much more demographic detail, could lead to much more sophisticated analysis. For example, if the service knows that a certain user loves sci-fi and hates romantic movies, what should it do if one day he starts checking out When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle? It might conclude, Vengroff suggests, that someone else is at his computer. Or perhaps he’s preparing for company. By engaging dataminers around the globe, Netflix may soon be able to draw such conclusions.
(cross-posted on TheNumerati.net)

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Reader Comments

Eric Siegel, Ph.D.

September 22, 2009 02:48 PM

Nice coverage, Stephen!

Here's a revealing interview with the "Pragmatic" laymen sub-team that I published (if the URL link below is missing, find it on my Predictive Analytics World blog).

Casual Rocket Scientists:
An Interview with a Layman Leading the Netflix Prize, Martin Chabbert

A couple of non-analytical laymen launched a mission to win the Netflix Prize, arguably the most high profile analytical competition to date. And these "casual part-timers" have succeeded - they compose one of three teams that together won the Prize. Martin Chabbert provides a tell-all interview, advocating adept engineering over innovative science. Their work and this competition as a whole are so cutting-edge, they make the space race look like good ol' "Flash Gordon".

For the full article, see:
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/layman-netflix-leader.php

Laurent Pacalin

September 22, 2009 05:06 PM

I congratulate Stephen Baker for having foreseen this trend and agree that predictive analytics play an increasingly significant role in the real-world whether for consumer entertainment or consumer credit.

At FICO (formerly Fair Isaac), we believe that math-fueled good decisions will bend the future arc compellingly toward the useful and the positive. We see this trend happening externally, in society at large, and internally, within the profession. We anticipate that the finest quants using the most advanced mathematics will rededicate themselves to the highest calling of developing decision management models that speed the velocity of global commerce and raise everyone’s level of success. We also believe that these enhanced tools will power better decisions by those entrusted to make those decisions. The two disciplines – good decisions supported by good models – go hand in hand. Working together, they can reclaim their proper shared role in society: rational, scientific, and broadly beneficial.

Laurent Pacalin
Chief Marketing Officer at FICO

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In Blogspotting Senior Writer Stephen Baker and Associate Editor Heather Green take a look at how cutting-edge technologies are changing business and society. Whether its blogs or wikis, data crunching or data targeting, technology’s advances are reshaping the world that we live in.

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