Kaggle is pretty important. But concentrating only on accuracy tuning (ignoring data collection, data curation, and interviewing stakeholders to find real busi

Kaggle is pretty important. But concentrating only on accuracy tuning (ignoring data collection, data curation, and interviewing stakeholders to find real business needs) in machine learning is like celebrating only (premature) optimization in software engineering. But don't get me wrong, lots of top notch results in the contests. It is just that it is testing only one facet of what is needed in a data scientist.