Saturday, January 3, 2009

Netflix contest, on the leader board

This is a simple blog to record any thoughts on the netflix contest. FYI, I am working on this in my free time only. I am a retired mathematician and do part time consulting work in information security through the team of Information Security Systems Inc (ISSI).
My first entry that got past the minimal threshold and put me into the grand spot of 1343 or so is based on a simple SVD model with 12 features plus four linear terms which measure global effects for movies, customers, time and gross average.
I have some other ideas that I'll be trying from time to time.
I've made a few observations about the data on the netflix forum, and will continue posting there.