I love a good data science competition to let me stretch my arms around a compelling problem. Kaggle is one of my favorite destinations these days to learn about all the innovative ways machine learning is being applied to real-life business problems. So I was pleasantly surprised to see this new challenge sponsored by Algomost, an international data mining platform.
AlgoMost recently launched a new competition focusing on M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) – M&A: Predict Possible Future Acquisition. The goal of the competition is to predict which companies are more likely to be acquired during the current fiscal year (ends in January’15). The contest will run until the end of August 2014.
An increase in the global mergers and acquisitions market is expected during 2014 according to Reuters. The AlgoMost platform that already unites more than 500 teams of data scientists around the world is launching this contest due to the relevance of the topic and transforming economy.
The total prize fund of $ 15,000 will be allocated this way – at the end of August 2014 the first $ 5000 will be divided up among the highest ranked teams according to evaluation of their solution as well as expert opinions. Then in March 2015 the main prize of $ 10,000 will be awarded. By this time the annual financial results of companies will be available.
We are fully committed to the principle of awarding the main prize to the one who is capable of creating best algorithm for solving a particular problem,” commented Mikhail Leviev, CEO of AlgoMost platform. “We would actually see what acquisitions have taken place: the one who was the most accurate to predict them would get the prize. We create a precedent – it’s a real challenge to the Global Intelligence to check the ability of solving similar problems”.
The sponsors provide competitors with all the data sets required, descriptions of the feature variables, along with a well-crafted list of popular economic metrics that could play a role in the solution. It sounds like grand fun and a great way to spend your summer!
Daniel, Managing Editor – insideBIGDATA
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