12 Data Science & AI Competitions to Advance Your Skills in 2021 | by Benedict Neo | Towards Data Science

I wrote about “10 Data Science Competitions for you to hone your skills for 2020” previously in 2019, so I thought this would be a good time to update it for 2021. The list will be quite similar, with some new additions. So check that out if you haven’t already!
Data Science requires utilizing statistical techniques and machine learning algorithms to work with a lot of data, and to effectively do so you need a lot of practice.
One great opportunity to practice is with data competitions. They serve as a platform to learn the best practices, gain feedback, and magnify your skills. They’re also a great way to expand your creativity and push boundaries within the data science field.
Most data competitions entail participants to solve an actual business task using gamification techniques to find the best solution within a short time frame. Being a good data scientist means having domain knowledge, so this is a great opportunity to dive into the subject area and understand how to use your knowledge to solve business tasks.
Here’s are 10 data science and AI competitions or competition platforms for you to take your skills to the next level in 2021, if you have suggestions for what to add to the list, please leave them in the comments.
1. Bitgrit2. Numer.ai3. Kaggle Competitions4. CodaLab5. Driven Data6. DataHack7. Machine Hack8. Zindi9. AIcrowd10. Iron Viz11. Data Analysis Competition 2021 by IASC12. TopCoder Open 2021
Bitgrit is a data science competition platform spearheaded by Japanese startup Bitgrit Inc. and has accumulated a community of over 25,000 data scientists globally.
Since its foundation in August 2019, Bitgrit has hosted several AI competitions including one to predict foreign exchange rates and another to optimize the algorithm for a profile-matching mobile app. They also have a job board focused on data science job opportunities with a wide variety of global clients.
・ Video Popularity Prediction Challenge
Numerai is, according to their website, “The hardest data science tournament on the planet”, it’s backed by Union Square Ventures, the co-founder of Renaissance, and the co-founder of Coinbase.
The main idea of the tournament is to build the world’s open hedge fund by modeling the stock market.
As detailed in the website, the steps are:
Start with hedge fund quality dataApply machine learning to predict the stock market.Submit your predictions to control the capital of the Numerai hedge fund.
Start with hedge fund quality data
Apply machine learning to predict the stock market.
Submit your predictions to control the capital of the Numerai hedge fund.
Data Scientists who take part in this will get payouts (in cryptocurrency) based on their performance. A total of $37,160,659 has been paid out to data scientists so far.
How it works is your stake on your model submission to start earning payouts. You either earn or burn a percentage of your stock based on your model performance. You can read more about this on their website.
The tournament power the hedge fund in real time, so it’s intended to go as long as the hedge fund is running.
To know more about Numerai, read their blog here.
Kaggle pretty much needs no introduction due to its prevalence in the data science community. It’s the most popular platform for hosting data science competitions with lucrative prizes.
Kaggle competitions are designed to provide challenges for competitors at all different stages of their machine learning careers. There is a range of broad types (from documentation):
FeaturedResearchPlaygroundRecruitmentAnnualLimited Participation
Featured
Research
Playground
Recruitment
Annual
Limited Participation
Riiid! Answer Correctness Prediction — $100,000
Jane Street Market Prediction — $100,000
RANZCR CLiP — Catheter and Line Position Challenge — $50,000
CodaLab is an open-source platform that provides an ecosystem for conducting computational research in a more efficient, reproducible, and collaborative manner.
There are two aspects of CodaLab: worksheets and competitions.
Worksheets allow you to capture complex research pipelines in a reproducible way and create “executable papers”. Use any data format or programming language — great for the power user! Codalab worksheets have a public instance hosted by Stanford University.
Competitions bring together the entire community to tackle the most challenging data and computational problems today. You can win prizes and also create your own competition. Codalab competitions have a public instance hosted by Université Paris-Saclay.
2020 Seu Video Caption Competition
DrivenData brings cutting-edge practices in data science and crowdsourcing to some of the world’s biggest social challenges and the organizations taking them on. There is a multitude of online challenges, usually lasting 2–3 months, where a global community of data scientists competes to come up with the best statistical model for difficult predictive problems that make a difference.
Based on the website:
You start with data — Competitors are given a set of data with both the independent and dependent variables.The second set of data is also released with just the independent variables, and the dependent variables that correspond with this set are kept secret.Build a model.Submit predictions for the second set(compare it against the actual values)The best performing team is declared the winner.
You start with data — Competitors are given a set of data with both the independent and dependent variables.
The second set of data is also released with just the independent variables, and the dependent variables that correspond with this set are kept secret.
Build a model.
Submit predictions for the second set(compare it against the actual values)
The best performing team is declared the winner.
MagNet: Model the Geomagnetic Field
“The Ultimate Battle Ground of Data Scientists”, A collection of data Science Competitions to Compete, Win, Practice, Learn And Build your Data Science Portfolio!
Data science hackathons on DataHack enable you to compete with leading data scientists and machine learning experts in the world.
This is your chance to work on real-life data science problems, improve your skillset, learn from expert data science and machine learning professionals, and hack your way to the top of the hackathon leaderboard!
You also stand a chance to win prizes and get a job at your dream data science company. Start your data science hackathon journey today!
Loan Prediction
An online platform for Machine Learning competitions.
They host the toughest business problems that can now find solutions in Machine Learning & Data Science.
Compete against hundreds of Data Scientists, with their industry curated Hackathons.
Buyer’s Time Prediction Challenge
Zindi is the first data science competition platform in Africa. Zindi hosts an entire data science ecosystem of scientists, engineers, academics, companies, NGOs, governments, and institutions focused on solving Africa’s most pressing problems.
For data scientists, from newbies to rock stars, Zindi is a place to access African datasets and solve African problems. Data scientists will find all the tools they need on Zindi to compete, share ideas, hone their skills, build their professional profiles, find career opportunities, and have fun!
Note that some challenges are exclusive to African residents.
Uber Nairobi Ambulance Perambulation Challenge
AIcrowd is a platform for streamlining your AI workflow — internally, or externally, by running AI, machine learning, and other data science challenges.
It helps organizations — whether businesses, universities, government agencies, or NGOs — develop, manage, and promote their challenges.
It streamlines your machine learning workflow and connects your problems with machine learning and data science specialists and enthusiasts, who will collaboratively try to find the most accurate, efficient, and effective solutions.
Market simulation competition
Iron Viz — the world’s largest virtual data visualization competition — ignites and showcases the power of the Tableau Community, allowing you to interact with data rockstars worldwide.
Three finalists (determined by the Iron Viz Qualifier Contest earlier this year) will advance to the Iron Viz Championship this October.
Not only does the winner earn bragging rights for a year, and a place among an incredible list of past champions, in the 2020 year, $10,000 was on the line, as well as a $5,000 donation to a non-profit of the champions choice.
TBA
IASC is an association of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) whose objectives are to promote the theory, methods, and practice of statistical computing and to foster interest and knowledge in effective and efficient statistical computing (from the website)
Theme: analysis of quality-of-life related data
Submission should clearly describe the significance of your findings either for individuals or for society. The primary data set may come from one or more databases but connecting information from different databases may help to obtain interesting and original conclusions.
The competition is open to everyone interested in presenting their poster at WSC 2021. You are allowed to work individually or in a small group of up to five participants on your poster.
Final submissions (PDF) are due on 30th April 2021
The annual TopCoder Open hosted by TopCoder is “The Ultimate Programming and Design Tournament”
With a total of 6 competition tracks, where the initial competitions are online, the winners accumulate TCO points throughout the competition, the ones with the highest points win a trip to the TCO finals. The TCO also has smaller regional events to encourage participation all around the world.
There’s a total of six competition tracks
AlgorithmDevelopmentFirst2finishMarathonUI DesignQuality Assurance
Algorithm
Development
First2finish
Marathon
UI Design
Quality Assurance
To know more, read the overview.
Starts at 1st January 2021 so mark your calendars!
Challenge data 2021
The M Open Forecasting Center — M5 competition in 2020
If you’re a student, or if you’re a teacher encouraging students to learn Data Science and AI, check out these challenges.
Nittany AI Challenge — offers teams of students the chance to compete for awards by developing and presenting AI-based solutions to improve the world around us through the four AI for Good pillars: education, environment, health, and humanitarianism.
Data Mining Cup — enthuse domestic and international students for intelligent data analysis and challenge them to find the best solution to a data mining problem in competition with others
Imagine Cup Junior 2021 — provides students aged 13 to 18 the opportunity to learn about technology and how it can be used to positively change the world. The global challenge is focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI), introducing students to AI and Microsoft’s AI for Good initiatives so they can come up with ideas to solve social, cultural, and environmental issues.
mlcontest
eval.ai
aicrowd
ods.ai
Thanks for reading! Please leave any other cool competitions that weren’t on the list.
Stay safe and Happy Holidays!
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