Another interesting thing from this is that it sounds like they will be awarding grand prizes for the best entry at set deadlines. In the first contest you had to improve on Cinematch by 10% to qualify to win the grand prize.
To qualify for the Grand Prize the RMSE of a Participant’s submitted predictions on the test subset must be less than or equal to 90% of 0.9525, or 0.8572 (the "qualifying RMSE"). After three (3) months have elapsed from the start of the Contest, when the RMSE of a submitted prediction set on the quiz subset improves beyond the qualifying RMSE an electronic announcement will inform all registered Participants that they have thirty (30) days to submit additional candidate prediction sets to be considered for judging.
Actually the post says it will run for a period of time shorter than half of the length of the first contest which could have run for 5 years (10/2006 - 10/2011).
From the post...
And, like so many great movies, there will be a sequel.
The advances spurred by the Netflix Prize have so impressed us that we’re planning Netflix Prize 2, a new big money contest with some new twists.
Here’s one: three years was a long time to compete in Prize 1, so the next contest will be a shorter time limited race, with grand prizes for the best results at 6 and 18 months.
While the first contest has been remarkable, we think Netflix Prize 2 will be more challenging, more fun, and even more useful to the field.
Stay tuned for more details when we announce the winners of Prize 1 in September.
Looking back at previous years, this seems like a pretty fun contest. I wish I had seen it earlier (deadline is in 2 days). I'd love to try it out next year.
I worked on the Netflix Challenge last year but did not come far and gave up after submitting a few mediocre results. Actually, I was proud of myself for my result did not explode but was within the range of the Cinematch's algorithm. The experience has given me a lot of respect for companies that are developing recommendation algorithms.
There should be more great competition like this. At this point, I'd say the benefits coming from all the research and development by the Netflix Challenge community as well as the experience obtained by many hobbyists like myself as the result of this competition has already exceeded the $1 million winning prize.
> From Sept. 12 to Oct. 14, 2018, we’re inviting you to submit your idea to win a share of $750,000, which we’ll award in February 2019 to the most compelling teams and projects.
Of course if you don't win they can still turn your entry into a theme. Sounds like a really inexpensive way to increase their 70 custom themes to several hundred for only $13k.
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