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The winners, the people who provide the best set of predictions based on an analysis of a database of millions of text questions, will get jobs at Facebook. Ac

The winners, the people who provide the best set of predictions based on an analysis of a database of millions of text questions, will get jobs at Facebook. Actually, it looks like the winners will just get interviews at Facebook. I think Kaggle is a very interesting site and company, but I think it's a stretch say they hold "data science" competitions. Most of their contest are extremely limited in scope to applying machine learning to pre-sanitized data sets. This really covers only a small part of what practicing data scientists do.

spicyj 13y ago
Indeed. From https://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-recruiting-iii-keyword-extraction/details/prizes https://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-recruiting-iii-keyword-ext...: Highly ranked contestants who indicate their interest will be considered by Facebook for interviews, based on their work in the competition and additional background. Not much of a prize.
stanthemaniam 13y ago
The previous Facebook competition didn't provide sanitized data for that reason. https://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-ii/data https://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-ii/data
svasan 13y ago
Kaggle is an interesting site. But the cynic in me says these contests/competitions are just a cheap way of effort harvesting. For a pittance, the companies sponsoring these contests are getting tremendous value in return. If you are a statistician/analytics person, there is no reason to let your value and skills get commoditized in this manner.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Last I heard, Kaggle charges $10,000/month for a competition.
  - svasan 13y ago
    The dollar equivalent of the value the companies get in return would be an order of magnitude more than what Kaggle charges the companies/clients that sponsor the contests.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      That doesn't mean it's "cheap", for the same reason Oracle isn't cheap or a private plane charter isn't cheap.
lignuist 13y ago
Getting a job at Facebook, actually does not feel like winning to me.

spicyj 13y ago

Indeed. From https://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-recruiting-iii-keyword-extraction/details/prizes https://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-recruiting-iii-keyword-ext...: Highly ranked contestants who indicate their interest will be considered by Facebook for interviews, based on their work in the competition and additional background. Not much of a prize.

stanthemaniam 13y ago

The previous Facebook competition didn't provide sanitized data for that reason. https://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-ii/data https://www.kaggle.com/c/facebook-ii/data

svasan 13y ago

Kaggle is an interesting site. But the cynic in me says these contests/competitions are just a cheap way of effort harvesting. For a pittance, the companies sponsoring these contests are getting tremendous value in return. If you are a statistician/analytics person, there is no reason to let your value and skills get commoditized in this manner.

jacques_chester 13y ago
Last I heard, Kaggle charges $10,000/month for a competition.
- svasan 13y ago
  The dollar equivalent of the value the companies get in return would be an order of magnitude more than what Kaggle charges the companies/clients that sponsor the contests.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    That doesn't mean it's "cheap", for the same reason Oracle isn't cheap or a private plane charter isn't cheap.

lignuist 13y ago

Getting a job at Facebook, actually does not feel like winning to me.