Francisco Marco-Serrano, author of the fmwaves blog pointed out another contest to determine a recommender system. Unlike the Netfix contest, which might not end up with a winner, the MyStrands contest appears to guarantee $100,000, and all that is needed is an idea. Again, this seems like a good opportunity for those in OR to use our approaches to attack these sorts of problems (it seems that CS “owns” recommender systems, for no obvious reason).
Hmmmm…. blog recommendations? systems that allow faculty to rate students? sabbatical destination recommendations? What do I need recommended, and how can OR help?
I think that the best would be to find some partners first.
I know how difficult it is to find a good idea. When I talk about some of my smallest idea with my friends, we end up in a quite amazing BIG idea in the end. Think that this too shall be tackle the same.
This is just a suggestion, but will definitely help the thinking process.