After three years, a team of programmers have finally laid claim to the $1 million “Netflix Prize” – a competition that invited teams to test their programming mettle and improve upon the online movie rental service’s movie recommendation algorithm by 10 percent.
While progress had been slow going, the 10 percent mark was finally broken last month after several top teams joined forces to form BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos. With a score of 10.08 percent, it looked like BellKor was ready to cash in on the reward, however their announcement put into effect a 30 day last call period for other teams to submit their work.
A team called The Ensemble did just that, turning in an algorithm that scored 10.09 percent, giving the team the lead over BellKor. BellKor would manage to tie the score with under 30 minutes left in the competition, but 4 minutes before close, The Ensemble turned in the top submission of 10.10 percent, stealing a victory in what turned out to be a nail-biting race.
Netflix is expected to formerly announce the winner once it confirms the data.
