Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Introduction

Hi!

My name is Wojtek Kulik. I used to hide under nickname "photek" (guess why, a limited collection handshake offered for the first correct solution; HINT: there are TWO reasons), but from now on I'll be using my real name only. I wish I could change my team's name, but apparently it's not possible (that means I've slightly polluted the leaderboard - sorry for that).

To quote Terry Pratchett - I live behind a keyboard in Warsaw (Poland), working on my startup project. As it's related to prediction, I decided to give a try in Netflix Prize challenge, hoping that success of my startup depends on the success of my approach to this challenge.

I've managed to get into TOP-40 recently. But to be honest, it's not enough for me... I've got plenty of ideas on my TODO list; unfortunately my current bottleneck is computing power.

Enough writing. Time to make a submission :-)

8 comments:

  1. My guess is you're into photography and technical things (programming, for example), thus the name photek.

    What algorithms are you using ?

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  2. dmnewbie - you're completely wrong, but you have 2 more shots to try ;-)

    Regarding algorithms - nothing special so far. SVD + NSVD + KNN + NN - everything slightly tuned, but I don't want to elaborate on that yet.
    I'm not using RBM (yet).

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  3. OK, is photek based on Polish words ? Unfortunately I know no Polish at all. Regarding algorithms, how much does NN help your result? I've no NN-based solution (RBM or other NNs) at all.

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  4. dmnewbie - no, that'd be cruel.

    NN helped me to get 0.881x from 0.884y (I don't remember exact values).

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  5. "Woj" is pronounced like "pho" and the last 3 letters of your name are "tek"?

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  6. Gerald - you are quite close. But remember: there are TWO reasons.
    I think I should setup some Progress Prize or somethin' to keep this contest attractive :-)

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  7. You like Pho noodle soup?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pho

    You are a fan of Photek the DJ?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photek

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  8. Gerald - the latter. Never heard of this soup...

    Let me know when you are in Warsaw - your reward will be waiting :-)

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