Netflix Algorithm
Ahh, where to start. Well, Netflix (your favorite place to rent movies online, receive them through your mail, then mail them back) has been hosting a competition for a while now. The object is to come up with an algorithm to make helpful suggestions for what a person should rent, based on their rental history. Think of it this way: teams are given access to 2+ gigabytes of data. Within this data are many anonymous movie rental histories. So, let’s say you have a history of 30 rentals from one person. The goal of the competition is to examine the first 15 rentals, then correctly predict a percentage of the next 15 rentals.
A Slashdot discussion titled Psychologist Beating Math Nerds in Race to Netflix Prize inevitably veered off course into a debate about scientific knowledge and the interplay between different academic fields. With regards to the history of science and the average level of scientific knowledge, there’s quite a comment (it is in response to this misguided comment):
What a bunch of drivel. Just because their level of knowledge isn’t what we have today, doesn’t make it any “easier.” Do you have any idea at all, or can you even comprehend, the kind of mathematics that were employed back in the day to solve anything? Take a look at the Principia for example. The geometry is insane. I’m a graduate student in Physics and I can’t really follow his proofs.
Furthermore, because early scientists did not have as much to build on, that makes it all the more difficult. Where was Faraday to get his inspiration on lines of force? What lead Maxwell in the right direction to unifying light with electromagnetism?
It’s great that 3rd graders know about electric circuits. That’s the point of scientific progress. That doesn’t make the original task trivial in any sense.
In other words, I hate you.
Whether or not you like the punchline at the end (it’s pretty much the reason I posted all this), that’s a pretty good point.
Comments
Nils +1
That original comment was pretty naive. Science is all about taking baby steps forward and building off of the discoveries that have preceded us. Given the little amount of knowledge that provided a foundation for early scientific study, progress must have been excruciatingly difficult. That’s my perception anyways. I hope I don’t come across as naive or simple-minded as that other guy did.
Dan McKeown +1
I wonder how many people read that first post and thought “he’s right, even I could have been an amazing scientist in the middle ages!” What I really find fascinating is that so much progress was made literally a thousand years (or more) before the renaissance and was promptly forgotten. It just goes to show that while humanity has the amazing ability to learn, create, and explore; the capacity to forget, destroy, and retreat is always a threat to the work of those who came before.