Netflix Nailbiter!
Submissions closed yesterday for the Netflix Prize, and the race is ridiculously close! The Ensemble came out of nowhere at the last minute to barely take first place on the leaderboard, but as of this writing, BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos appears to have a better score against the hitherto secret "Test set," according to this unofficial forum post!
[T]here’s a reason that Netflix has not yet announced the winner, even though the leaderboard is quite clear. That’s because the Netflix prize is actually based on two sets of data. The first is called the Quiz set, which is used to publicly display how a team is faring to the public and to determine when the contest would kick into its 30 day last call mode. But the set that really matters, the Test set, is still a secret, and nobody knows if The Ensemble or team BellKor performs better. Netflix will make the final contest announcement in the next few weeks.
Update: Yehuda Koren of BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos has posted on the contest’s forums that BellKor came out with the lowest Test score, though it appears that Netflix has yet to confirm this.
