This Psychologist Might Outsmart the Math Brains Competing for the Netflix Prize

Potter likes to use what psychologists know about human behavior. “The fact that these ratings were made by humans seems to me to be an important piece of information that should be and needs to be used,” he says. Potter has great respect for the technical prowess of BellKor — he is, after all, still behind the team in the rankings — but he thinks the computer science community studying this problem suffers from a bad case of groupthink. He refers to the psychological model underlying their mathematical approach as “crude.” His tone suggests that if I weren’t taping, he might use a stronger word.