When Your Computer Calls You a Nerd: A Guest Post

Ian Ayres‘s recent book, Super Crunchers, contains an interesting description of the secret to the success of Netflix (a company that’s been discussed before on this blog). According to Ayres, Netflix’s movie recommendation algorithms are so good that they know my taste in movies better than I do. It is a source of wonderment to me just how well they know what I’ll like.

But last week, my friend and colleague Todd Sinai complained that Netflix had essentially just called him a nerd: it suggested that he rent a movie called Helvetica. That’s right: a movie about … a font. He thought that the algorithm had made a mistake. I just figured that Netflix had discovered that Todd is a bit of a tech-loving nerd. As a result of this recommendation, needless to say, he was mercilessly mocked by his econo-friends at Wharton.

But this week, it was my turn. Netflix has now recommended that I, too, rent the movie whose romantic lead is played by a (rather beautiful) sans-serif font. Yep: called a nerd by a super-crunching computer. It hurts. Still, given the film’s reviews, I decided to embrace my inner geek, and the DVD is currently on its way. After all, the Netflix algorithm is almost never wrong.