106,173 research outputs found
Statistical Significance of the Netflix Challenge
Inspired by the legacy of the Netflix contest, we provide an overview of what
has been learned---from our own efforts, and those of others---concerning the
problems of collaborative filtering and recommender systems. The data set
consists of about 100 million movie ratings (from 1 to 5 stars) involving some
480 thousand users and some 18 thousand movies; the associated ratings matrix
is about 99% sparse. The goal is to predict ratings that users will give to
movies; systems which can do this accurately have significant commercial
applications, particularly on the world wide web. We discuss, in some detail,
approaches to "baseline" modeling, singular value decomposition (SVD), as well
as kNN (nearest neighbor) and neural network models; temporal effects,
cross-validation issues, ensemble methods and other considerations are
discussed as well. We compare existing models in a search for new models, and
also discuss the mission-critical issues of penalization and parameter
shrinkage which arise when the dimensions of a parameter space reaches into the
millions. Although much work on such problems has been carried out by the
computer science and machine learning communities, our goal here is to address
a statistical audience, and to provide a primarily statistical treatment of the
lessons that have been learned from this remarkable set of data.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-STS368 the Statistical
Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Oii-web: An interactive online programming contest training system
In this paper we report our experience, related to the online training for the
Italian and International Olympiads in Informatics. We developed an interactive online
system, based on CMS, the grading system used in several major programming contests
including the International Olympiads in Informatics (IOI), and used it in three distinct
context: training students for the Italian Olympiads in Informatics (OII), training teachers
in order to be able to assist students for the OII, and training the Italian team for the
IOI. The system, that is freely available, proved to be a game changer for the whole italian
olympiads in informatics ecosystem: in one year, we almost doubled the participation to
OII, from 13k to 21k secondary school students.
The system is developed basing on the Contest Management System (CMS, http://cms-
dev.github.io/), so it is highly available to extensions supporting, for instance, the pro-
duction of feedback on problems solutions submitted by trainees. The system is also freely
available, with the idea of allowing for support to alternative necessities and developmen
Two-Stage Team Rent-Seeking: Experimental Analysis
This paper presents a two-stage team rent-seeking model with a contest prize that is not excludable among winning team members. When early effort is a perfect substitute for late effort, early actors can free ride on their late-moving teammates. However, when early and late efforts are complements, all team members exert positive effort levels. Asymmetries in early effort reduce effort choices for all late movers. The theory is tested with laboratory experimental methods. Although subjects overinvest relative to the Nash equilibrium in all treatments, chosen effort levels provide limited support for the model. Early movers exerted higher effort in the complement treatment, and second-stage effort choices were broadly consistent with best response functions. Surprisingly, in both single-shot and repeated play environments, early movers in the substitute treatment did not free ride, choosing effort levels similar to those of late movers. [excerpt
The use of multiplayer game theory in the modeling of biological populations
The use of game theory in modeling the natural world is widespread. However, this modeling mainly involves two player games only, or "playing the field" games where an individual plays against an entire (infinite) population. Game-theoretic models are common in economics as well, but in this case the use of multiplayer games has not been neglected. This article outlines where multiplayer games have been used in evolutionary modeling and the merits and limitations of these games. Finally, we discuss why there has been so little use of multiplayer games in the biological setting and what developments might be useful
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