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With all their employees and machine learning people Netflix couldn't find a single data scientist to present this in a nicer way? All we get is an Excel sheet

by jval43 3y ago

With all their employees and machine learning people Netflix couldn't find a single data scientist to present this in a nicer way? All we get is an Excel sheet dump with a huge list, not even grouped by series? Not to mention regions, languages, genres, some graphs, etc. I'm a bit surprised to be honest.

kranke155 3y ago
I wonder if this data dump is a consequence of the recent SAG and WGA agreements. A large part of their fight was about Netflix opening up the numbers. I was under the impression that it was to be done privately, but maybe they have to release this publicly and a lot more data privately to the Guilds.
adamiscool8 3y ago
Funny, I was going to comment how refreshing it is to see a raw Excel data dump instead of insights tortured to whatever agenda by a data science team. Regions and genres would be nice though.
tgv 3y ago
Have you never seen netflix' recommendations? That must tell you how much they care about customer facing data.
teej 3y ago
This isn't a marketing effort, it's a press release for Hollywood insiders.
jay_kyburz 3y ago
Really, I came to say I really appreciated having just the data to play with. Would have been nice to have a few more columns though. Country of origin, number of episodes and play time. etc.
zerocrates 3y ago
The only thing I'd really like to see them add is just a column for how many hours each thing is, so you could tell how many "watches" this vaguely converts to. Of course you could look that up but, a lot of looking up to do there.
karaterobot 3y ago
If they did put it into a slick data visualization, people would say "this is marketing, just give me the raw numbers". This is better because if we wait 2 minutes, someone will make a visualization of it anyway.
everdrive 3y ago
Based on my experience, I would imagine some management type grabbed the reins and claimed that the engineers just don't know how to present information! And then of course he proceeded to make the message worse and less clear.
dylan604 3y ago
They published the data. You are free to use whatever JS library of your choice to do that. Then you can come back and post a Show HN, then someone else can comeback with their Show HN of how it was rewritten in Rust/Go/Lisp just for the lulz. Hell, it's tuesday, so by monday, I expect a "did it in a weekend" SaaS allowing uploads of boring raw excel data and receive a nice UI for the mere exchange of them a permanent and irrevocable license to use the data for any purpose commercial or not.
- Maxious 3y ago
  > uploads of boring raw excel data and receive a nice UI https://datasette.io/ https://datasette.io/
ravetcofx 3y ago
And was it just me or did the formatting cause massive lag in LibreOffice Calc, had to convert it to CSV first to make it usable

by jval43 3y ago

kranke155 3y ago

I wonder if this data dump is a consequence of the recent SAG and WGA agreements. A large part of their fight was about Netflix opening up the numbers. I was under the impression that it was to be done privately, but maybe they have to release this publicly and a lot more data privately to the Guilds.

adamiscool8 3y ago

Funny, I was going to comment how refreshing it is to see a raw Excel data dump instead of insights tortured to whatever agenda by a data science team. Regions and genres would be nice though.

tgv 3y ago

Have you never seen netflix' recommendations? That must tell you how much they care about customer facing data.

teej 3y ago

This isn't a marketing effort, it's a press release for Hollywood insiders.

jay_kyburz 3y ago

Really, I came to say I really appreciated having just the data to play with. Would have been nice to have a few more columns though. Country of origin, number of episodes and play time. etc.

zerocrates 3y ago

The only thing I'd really like to see them add is just a column for how many hours each thing is, so you could tell how many "watches" this vaguely converts to. Of course you could look that up but, a lot of looking up to do there.

karaterobot 3y ago

If they did put it into a slick data visualization, people would say "this is marketing, just give me the raw numbers". This is better because if we wait 2 minutes, someone will make a visualization of it anyway.

everdrive 3y ago

Based on my experience, I would imagine some management type grabbed the reins and claimed that the engineers just don't know how to present information! And then of course he proceeded to make the message worse and less clear.

dylan604 3y ago

They published the data. You are free to use whatever JS library of your choice to do that. Then you can come back and post a Show HN, then someone else can comeback with their Show HN of how it was rewritten in Rust/Go/Lisp just for the lulz. Hell, it's tuesday, so by monday, I expect a "did it in a weekend" SaaS allowing uploads of boring raw excel data and receive a nice UI for the mere exchange of them a permanent and irrevocable license to use the data for any purpose commercial or not.

Maxious 3y ago
> uploads of boring raw excel data and receive a nice UI https://datasette.io/ https://datasette.io/

ravetcofx 3y ago

And was it just me or did the formatting cause massive lag in LibreOffice Calc, had to convert it to CSV first to make it usable