Kaggle + KDnuggets: The perfect couple for Data Scientists

There are two Ks working for one KEY objective: to wide to the world of Data Science landscape, and in the journey, to prepare new professionals in this field and to provide to well established pros a place to solve challenging, funny and hard data science problems. That’s for me the objective of Kaggle and KDnuggets. But first, I want to talk about Kaggle.

Kaggle: Data Science like a sport

My friend; yes you, Data Scientist; if you don’t have yet a Kaggle’s profile, you are waisting your precious time. Grab this in your mind like a gravestone:

“Kaggle is the new CV for Data-Driven professionals” Don’t you know what is Kaggle? Is the company which is revolutioning Big Data landscape with a single objective: to help to companies to host Data Science problems to solve critical business issues. Yes, my friend, the most challenging problems in Data Science are posted in the portal in form of competitions, with a fixed schedule to solve them, and a person or a team registered in the portal can summit a solution.

After the solutions, the winners are announced, and “generally” the answer is published in Kaggle’s forums. See a completed example here.

To understand how to participate in the competitions, I recommend you that you should read Kaggle’s wiki.

Interesting problems posted right now?

GE Flight Quest: Make Flying More Efficient

Prize Pool: $250,000 Deadline to Enter: Feb 14th, 2013 (for details, see the Quest Timeline) Your Challenge: Develop a usable and scalable algorithm that delivers a real-time flight profile to the pilot, helping them make flights more efficient and reliably on time.

Airlines are constantly looking for ways to make flights more efficient. From gate conflicts to operational challenges to air traffic management, the dynamics of a flight can change quickly and lead to costly delays. However, real-time big data analysis is changing the course of flight as we know it. Stuck at the gate again? Time to do something about it. See the official rules at www.gequest.com/flight/rules for details.

GE Hospital Quest: Improve the Patient Experience

Prize Pool: $100,000 Submission Deadline: Feb 17th, 2013 Your challenge: Contribute to the design of the ultimate patient experience.

While medicine should be left to the professionals, many aspects of hospital operations are ripe for rethinking. In this Quest, we focus on operational (non-medical) solutions that can promote an improved health care system experience for patient and family. Can your data-driven app provide the cure? See the official rules at www.gequest.com/hospital/rules for details.

So, Do you want an opportunity to obtain money using a combination of your knowledge in Statistics, Data Visualization, Data Mining, Predictive Analytics, etc? Or better, like the King of Pop said: “You are not alone”: at Kaggle, you can form teams to solve a competition; allowing to combine skills with your fellows. I see Kaggle, not just like a competition portal, but like a great study platform, because you can learn from your peers, and from Past solutions too. So, don’t wait more and create a profile, read the instructions, and enter in a competition. You can see them here. But, you should be wondering how KDnuggets can complement to Kaggle. No? Keep reading.

KDnuggets: Mining the web for Data-Driven pros

First, I want to explain what is KDnuggets. If you are a Data Mining expert, I don’t have to explain you anything because you already know the value of this portal.

But, if you are a new professional in this field, I will try to give you a summary about it. First, of course, the person who is behind this: Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro (@kdnuggets) founded this newsletter in 1993m, but before that time, he led Data Mining and Consulting groups at GTE Laboratories, Knowledge Stream Partners and Xchange. Now, he serves as the current Chair of ACM SIGKDD, the leading professional organization for Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, and besides, he is also the founder of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) conferences.

Don’t you believe me? Do a simple trick, search in Google the term “Data Mining”, and count the quantity of links related to KDnuggets.

This portal is a Must-To-Go site for Data Mining community where you can find great interviews to leaders in this field (See the exclusive interview to Rayid Ghani, Chief Scientist for Obama 2012 Campaign), useful polls, amazing webinars from experts and companies using Data Mining techniques for its applications (Wait for the next webinar on January, 30th: Real-Time Predictive Analytics with james Taylor from Inkiru platform), Data Science jobs (See my last post about this topic or a great research position posted in the portal at AT&T Labs), and a great quantity of news related to Data Mining applications, PhD scholarships in these fields, Master programs focused on Analytics, Data Mining and Statistics courses, and many more things. So, if you are interested in Data Mining and all related fields, you must use KDnuggets like your Home page in your web browser (This is my case).

Final Thoughts

So, my fellow, with the combination of your Kaggle’s profile and the information published at KDnuggets, I think that you can advance a lot, pursuing your career like a Data-Driven professional.

Happy Data Science Hacking !!! Marcos Luis Ortíz Valmaseda about.me/marcosortiz @marcosluis2186