$ 3 Million Dollar Predictive Modeling Prize

Title
Making Data Science a Sport Abstract:
Possibly the biggest news at Strataconf is the launch of the $3m predictive modeling prize by the Health Provider Network (HPN) – the biggest data mining competition ever. In fact, predictive modeling competitions are shaping up to be the biggest thing in data science in 2011. On the way are other huge prizes and vital scientific projects that are being thrown open to a competition for the first time. Come and hear from Kaggle, the hosts of the HPN competition and get inside knowledge on creating and entering competitions. Kaggle is a brand new project that hosts predictive modeling competitions, allowing companies to post their problems and have the best in the world compete to offer the best solution. Although less than a year old, Kaggle has already used competitions to help improve the state of the art in HIV research, chess ratings and motorway travel time forecasting. Data science competitions are becoming exciting, as companies and researchers are realizing that they are the only way to really get the most out of a dataset. Participants are finding that they can use competitions to further their knowledge and skills, test their ideas, meet the most inspiring people and develop a reputation as a world-leading performer. Kaggle is bringing these two groups together, providing new opportunities in data science. Bio: Anthony Goldbloom is the Founder and CEO of Kaggle. He assists companies with framing modeling tasks as data prediction competitions, ensuring that competitions reflect real-life projects. Before founding Kaggle, Anthony worked in the macroeconomic modelling areas of the Reserve Bank of Australia and before that the Australian Treasury. In these roles, Anthony was responsible for building macroeconomic models, generating economic forecasts and simulating the impact of changes in interest rates and fiscal policy on the Australian economy. Anthony holds a first class honours degree in economics and econometrics from the University of Melbourne and has published in The Economist magazine and the Australian Economic Review.