Simple algorithm better than humans at picking 'significant' films: study

New York

IN THE escalating battle of big data vs human experts, score another win for numbers. The most accurate predictions of which movies the US Library of Congress will deem "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" are not the views of critics or fans but a simple algorithm applied to a database, according to a study published on Monday.

The crucial data, scientists reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are what the Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) calls "Connections" - films, television episodes and other works that allude to an earlier movie.