Netflix's stoked-up algorithms

At the start of the year, The Atlantic published a very nice, long article about Netflix's movie recommendation algorithm. You may remember this algorithm (internally known as Cinematch) received a $1 million makeover several years ago (the Netflix Prize), only that the prize-winning entry was deemed too complex--and does not generate sufficient incremental value--to be put into production. The reporter, Alexis Madrigal, noticed that Netflix has shifted attention from the queue of recommended movies to providing (micro-)genres of movies you might be interested in. His article is a great example of powerful data journalism: he reverse-engineered the internal structure of...