Hi, Habr!
On May 4, 2011, the Heritage Provider Network, the largest health care organization in the state of California, announced a competition for the best prediction algorithm, which will make it possible to reduce healthcare costs.
The competition started on April 4, 2011 at 19:00 GMT and will last almost 2 years - until April 3, 2013.
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The main prize of the competition, namely, $ 3,000,000, will be received by the one who develops the algorithm that allows predicting with the highest accuracy on the basis of data from previous years, how many days this year patients will spend in the hospital.
Anonymous samples of similar data for the past 3 years are provided as source data.
The competition takes place in three stages. At each stage, 2 winners are selected, each of whom receives a guaranteed prize from 20 to 60 thousand US dollars in accordance with the terms of the promotion. The winners of each stage will be announced at the O'Reilly's Strata Conference conferences, which will be held in New York and then in Santa Clara (California).
Deadline of the first stage - August 31, 2011.
As an assessment and comparison of the participants' results, the metric described in the contest rules is used.
Competition rules and other useful information can be found on the
official website . To take part, simply register by entering your e-mail, and confirm your agreement with the
rules , after which the initial data in the form of .csv files and specification for them will be available for download.
I must say that this kind of contests have become known thanks to NetFlix. In 2009, the BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos team
received $ 1,000,000 from the NetFlix service for improving the recommendation algorithm.
Apparently, this is a good way to pump skills, prove yourself and earn with your mind. Is not it, Habr?