The Mendicant Bug

Github just announced their own version of the Netflix Prize.  Instead of predicting movie ratings, Github wants you to suggest repositories for users to watch.  This is different from the Netflix Prize in a number of ways:

1. a user watching a repo is similar to a user visiting a page from a search engine – they are implicit endorsements (we assume that doing so means the user actually likes the repo)
2. we are predicting the likelihood of a user wanting to watch a repo (binary event), rather than how much a user likes a movie
3. the data set is a lot smaller, and sparsity is a LOT greater (the matrix is 0.006% filled vs. Netflix 1% filled)
4. you get multiple tries!  they let you pick 10 repos that user may watch and as long as one of them matches, you get credit for it

Already there have been many submissions.  The number one place is currently held by Daniel Haran with 46.9% guessed correctly.  Happy hunting, if you decide to compete.

The prizes are a bottle of Pappy van Winkle bourbon and a large Github account for life.  The bottle of Pappy is making me consider competing.