Netflix Prize Contest ends after nearly three years

The Netflix Prize Contest, a million-dollar challenge to improve the accuracy of the Netflix recommendation algorithm by 10%, has finally ended after close to three years. One team, BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, claimed victory by showing a result of better than 10%, which kicked off a 30-day period where other teams would have a chance to top the leading score and win the million. That period has now ended, with another team, The Ensemble, apparently beating BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos by a fraction of a percentage point.

According to the leaderboard, the Ensemble submitted its potential winning entry just 20 minutes after BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos made its final test. The score is 10.10% for Ensemble and 10.09% for BKPC, but the results are now going to judges for testing and verification before the prize is awarded. As a condition of the contest, the teams agree to reveal their algorithms and make them available for Netflix to use in improving its recommendation system.

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