Andre Yoskowitz
30 Jun 2009 3:56
In 2006, the popular online movie rental company Netflix started a contest to see who could improve its recommendations by 10 percent.
Today, a "multinational group of researchers, scientists and engineers" has submitted their entry, and are well on their way to winning the $1 million dollar prize.
Because the team was the first to submit, competitors now have a 30 day window to get better solutions in or the contest is over.
The group says their solution improves predictions by 10.05 percent, just over the threshold.
BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, as the group dubbed itself includes researchers at AT&T, a research scientist at Yahoo, and two Austrian engineers.