Kaggle
Encyclopedia
Kaggle is a platform for data analytics
competitions founded in April 2010. Companies and researchers post their data. Statisticians and data miners from all over the world compete to produce the best models. This crowdsourcing
approach relies on the fact that there are countless strategies that can be applied to any predictive modelling task and it is impossible to know at the outset which technique or analyst will be most effective.
Alongside its classic competitions which are open to anyone, it also offers "Kaggle@Work" competitions open only to employees of a company, and Kaggle in Class for university groups.
, Wikipedia
and Deloitte for its competitions. Kaggle is best known as the platform that's hosting the $3 million Heritage Health Prize.
Competitions have resulted in many successful projects including furthering the state of the art in HIV Research, chess ratings and traffic forecasting. Several academic papers have been published on the basis of findings made in Kaggle competitions. A key to this is the effect of the live leaderboard, which encourages participants to continue innovating beyond existing best practice.
"Healthy competition", The Economist, April 2011
"May the best algorithm win...", The Wall Street Journal, March 2011
"Kaggle contest aims to boost Wikipedia editors", New Scientist, July 2011
Analytics
Analytics is the application of computer technology, operational research, and statistics to solve problems in business and industry. Analytics is carried out within an information system: while, in the past, statistics and mathematics could be studied without computers and software, analytics has...
competitions founded in April 2010. Companies and researchers post their data. Statisticians and data miners from all over the world compete to produce the best models. This crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....
approach relies on the fact that there are countless strategies that can be applied to any predictive modelling task and it is impossible to know at the outset which technique or analyst will be most effective.
How Kaggle competitions work
- The competition host prepares the data and a description of the problem. Kaggle offers a consulting service which can help the host do this, as well as frame the competition, anonymize the data, and integrate the winning model into their operations.
- Participants experiment with different techniques and compete against each other to produce the best models. For most competitions, submissions are scored immediately (based on their predictive accuracy relative to a hidden solution file) and summarized on a live leaderboard.
- After the deadline passes, the competition host pays the prize money in exchange for the winning model.
Alongside its classic competitions which are open to anyone, it also offers "Kaggle@Work" competitions open only to employees of a company, and Kaggle in Class for university groups.
The impact of Kaggle competitions
Kaggle has over 13,000 data scientists worldwide, from fields such as computer science, statistics, economics and mathematics. It has partnered with organisations such as NASANASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
, Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
and Deloitte for its competitions. Kaggle is best known as the platform that's hosting the $3 million Heritage Health Prize.
Competitions have resulted in many successful projects including furthering the state of the art in HIV Research, chess ratings and traffic forecasting. Several academic papers have been published on the basis of findings made in Kaggle competitions. A key to this is the effect of the live leaderboard, which encourages participants to continue innovating beyond existing best practice.
External links
"Competition shines light on dark matter", Office of Science and Technology Policy, Whitehouse website, June 2011"Healthy competition", The Economist, April 2011
"May the best algorithm win...", The Wall Street Journal, March 2011
"Kaggle contest aims to boost Wikipedia editors", New Scientist, July 2011