clipped from: online.wsj.com   

Netflix Aims to Refine Art of Picking Films


It's a case of mixing Spielberg with statistics: How can you use computers to guess the sorts of movies people like? Netflix, the DVD rental outfit, has a database program for using its two billion movie ratings from customers to predict what movies they will enjoy. A year ago, Netflix offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could come up with a method that was at least 10% more accurate.