Comments on: Netflix Prize Winners May Be Disqualified

By: admin

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:41:32 +0000

On the issue of ownership, I stand corrected. And i’m actually quite a fan of Netflix but the timing of the announcement is a little inconvenient and a little suspicious. None of the auto-registration submissions to which you refer are actually qualifying submissions and don’t really seem like a threat to BellKor’s submission. I know there are a lot of hopefuls but it honestly seems as if Netflix only has to concern itself with whether BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos has won the prize…or not.

For my part, I sincerely hope Netflix does the honorable thing and recognizes your efforts. Good luck Chris!

By: Chris Volinsky

Chris Volinsky — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:31:56 +0000

Oh, OK…I think I mis-understood your accusation. There is no reason to believe that Netflix has acted in poor faith or would in any way avoid paying the prize. They have been excellent stewards of the competition so far and have been more than fair every step of the way.

By the way, it is *not* true that Netflix owns the winning algorithms. Those algorithms are licensed to Netflix for them to use as they see fit, but ownership is retained by the winner.

And yes, all of our teams are in compliance with the rules.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:26:49 +0000

Regarding the auto-register comment, I hope you are right. I’ve been following you and your team’s progress for over two years and you definitely deserve it. I would very much like to see you win this prize.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:21:57 +0000

Chris,

I don’t think technical collaboration is bad sportsmanship. I think setting up rules in a way to avoid paying a hard earned prize is bad sportsmanship. I’m anticipating this to be the opening salvo in an attempt to avoid paying you guys the $1m you’ve obviously earned. So the question is this…have you or any member of your collaboration ever had more than one account with exactly the same team members. By definition that disqualifies you and every team of which that person is a member…

By: Chris Volinsky

Chris Volinsky — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:18:35 +0000

I am a member of the BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos team. We have not broken any rules, and no one has accused us as such. Each of the teams mentioned above are legitamate instantiations of teams, with different sets of team members, and are totally compliant with the rules. The history of the competition (as you well know) has been filled with independent teams combining to improve RMSE. In fact, this has been one of the wonderful discoveries in the competition, that blending teams can lead to substantial gains in RMSE. Perhaps you can explain why you think technical collaboration is bad sportsmanship? These partnerships are both within the letter and the spirit of the rules of the competition.

Netflix’ announcement today was to combat recent attempts to auto-register teams to submit multiple entries. See e.g. http://www.netflixprize.com//community/viewtopic.php?id=1466

By: admin

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:36:44 +0000

Update: here is a link to the announcement by Netflix http://tr.im/ruCZ