Data Science Competitions in Action
Top 25 Machine Learning & AI Hackathons for Anyone to Move to Data Science!
Kickstart your Data Science Career right now!
Introduction
Do your thoughts also belong to the below listed doubts ? If so, you have reached the perfect place. This article will help you take your next step in data science and allow you to make great progress in your career.
- I’m Confused — Where do I start my Data Science Career?
- As a Working Professional, after many years of working in a different domain, How do I dive into Data Science and Machine Learning and quickly learn things?
- As a student, not having done any projects or challenges, How do I approach Hackathons and create my own projects and applications?
- and many more … Where do I start and How do I Proceed?
You are here to understand and apply your skills soon. This article will be a great guide to anyone willing to start a Career in Data Science.
3 things to keep in mind while starting
- Always keep learning continuously, experiment with great consistency, and follow your intuition, and your domain knowledge & business acumen will build over time.
- Remember that the only way to apply machine learning and data science concepts is by getting your hands dirty by practicing immediately once you learn the theory.
- Decide your Area of Interest and the Skills required by going through the Blogs and Bootcamps mentioned below. This will help you decide on the Hackathon site to participate in.
Once you are good with all the 3 vital points, let's get started with Competitions or Hackathons. Data Science Challenge is not only about applying Machine Learning algorithms but an amazing opportunity to learn, understand and implement the solutions needed for specific problems that give immense satisfaction. Meanwhile, real-world problems are not necessarily the same as those provided in the competitions but, these platforms enable you to apply your knowledge to processes and see how you fare compared to others.
Advantages of participating in Data Science Competitions
You have a lot to gain and literally nothing to lose by participating in these competitions. Participating in Hackathons have great advantages like:
- Amazing learning and collaborating opportunity. Networking with like-minded people will be a great asset. Working in teams is even great since it helps to think over a problem from different perspectives and approach the problem collaboratively.
- Applying and experimenting with many state-of-the-art approaches and datasets.
- You may end up meeting a great contact and landing an awesome job by showcasing your passion and skills to the world.
- It is always fun to participate and see how you fare on the leaderboard. That adrenaline rush is real during the publishing of those Leaderboards where our Rankings are announced.
- The prize money is always a bonus if we win but it shouldn’t be our only criteria to participate. Our goal and focus, is learning to apply our skills.
Below are the Top 25 Awesome Machine Learning Hackathons (Competitive Platforms for Data Science) that offer both- Resources to Learn and Challenges to applying your acquired skills are listed below, lets us take some time and appreciate the fact that YOU are ready to make a conscious effort to obtain skills and apply them in a close to real-world setting.
1. Kaggle (Level: Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced)
Kaggle is the World’s Largest Data Science community platform for Data Science competitions with more than 10,00,000 registered users consisting of both novice and expert. It’s a crowd-sourced platform (acquired by Google) to attract, nurture, train, and challenge data scientists from all around the world to solve data science, machine learning, and predictive analytics problems.
Kaggle enables data scientists and other developers to host datasets, engage in running machine learning contests, and write and share code in Python, R, and R Markdown. Over 150K “kernels” / code have been shared on Kaggle covering everything from sentiment analysis to object detection.
Key Highlights :
i. 4 Categories of Expertise Competitions, Notebooks, Datasets, and Discussion.
ii. 5 Performance Tiers — Novice, Contributor, Expert, Master, and Grandmaster.
iii. Many companies hire based on Kaggle Profile which adds immense value to your resume.
iv. Beginners can start with Courses to learn basic skills of Data Science & Machine Learning and then move to Tabular Playground Series which helps in practicing before going for intermediate and advanced competitions.
2. DataHack by Analytics Vidhya (Level: Beginner and Intermediate)
Analytics Vidhya is one of the World's Leading Data Science Communities & Knowledge Portals. Analytics Vidhya hackathons are an excellent opportunity for anyone keen on improving their digital skills like Artificial intelligence, Machine learning, Natural Language Processing, Deep Learning, Business Analytics, Data Science, Big data, Data visualization techniques, etc.
Data Science Blogathon had been conducted for 7 Editions (More Editions to come in future) to help budding writers and data science enthusiasts to show their talent and passion for writing Technical Blogs and build a Data Science Portfolio. Analytics Vidhya has been my personal favorite as it offers both Hackathons and Blogathons. It offers 2 interesting sections Free Courses and Blog to learn and apply your skills. Beginners can take advantage of the above sections and get benefitted immensely.
3. Zindi (Level : Intermediate)
Zindi is the first data science competition platform in Africa with the mission of giving organizations and governments access to world-class machine learning and AI solutions through the talented community of data scientists, scientists, engineers, academics, companies, NGOs, governments, and institutions focused on solving Africa’s most pressing problems.
Interesting Real-world Challenges such as “Lacuna — Correct Field Detection Challenge”: To design a method to accurately find field locations & “AutoInland Vehicle Insurance Claim Challenge”: To predict if a client will submit a vehicle insurance claim in the next 3 months, are hosted in Zindi which offers good prize money whereas other Zindi competitions offer Zindi points to contribute for the Global Zindi Rankings where the users are shown representing their Country.
4. Machine Hack (Level: Beginner and Intermediate)
MachineHack is an online platform for Machine Learning competitions, which is a brainchild of Analytics India Magazine, a media portal that is dedicated to expanding and promoting the Data and Analytics community in India. They host business problems that the participants can find solutions to using Machine Learning.
Key Highlights :
i. 4 Sections of MachineHack are Active Hackathons, Practise Hackathons, Rankings, and Bootcamp.
ii. Most Interesting part apart from Hackathons, is the Bootcamp which provides Video lectures for learning with the help of experts. Check the Amazing Bootcamps hosted — “Customer Analytics in Retail”, “Machine Learning in HR using Tensorflow”, “Stacking Ensembles to Solve Kaggle” and many more.
iii. 4 Performance Tiers — Apprentice, Champion, Master, and Grandmaster.
5. DrivenData (Level: Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced)
DrivenData hosts data science competitions to build a better world, bringing cutting-edge predictive models to organizations tackling the world’s toughest problems. At DrivenData, they bring cutting-edge practices in data science and crowdsourcing to some of the world’s biggest social challenges. They host online challenges, usually lasting 2–3 months, where a global community of data scientists competes to come up with the best statistical and machine learning models for difficult predictive problems that make a difference.
Key Highlights :
i. Competitions are in 2 Categories: For Prize Money & For Fun.
ii. 3 Difficulty Levels — Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced.
iii. Some of the Challenges include :
1. DengAI: Predicting Disease Spread
2. Richter’s Predictor: Modeling Earthquake Damage
3. Hateful Memes: Phase 2 With Top 5 Solutions here.
iv. The Blog section for Data science concepts and announcing the Winners of the competitions.
6. XEEK.ai (Level: Beginner and Intermediate)
Xeek.ai challenges, unite the Data and Geoscience communities which include leading data scientists, developers, geoscientists, and machine learning specialists — around the shared goal of crowdsourcing innovative solutions that solve energy’s largest challenges.
Xeek.ai is a product launched by Studio X, a digital innovation studio reimagining the future of work in exploration. Powered by Shell, the Studio X team discover, launch, and scale breakthrough products that transform the energy industry. Xeek.ai Challenges are very interesting and suitable for Beginner and Intermediate levels.
7. Bitgrit (Level: Intermediate)
Bitgrit, Founded in Tokyo in 2017, is an AI competition, recruiting, and networking platform for data scientists where they challenge their prestigious data scientist community to develop unique data-driven solutions to optimize AI and better integrate it in today’s society across industries. It is home to a community of over 25,000 engineers worldwide.
Key Highlights :
i. Hosts a Job Portal for data science and data engineering jobs for the Japan location.
ii. 3 Important Datasets on Agriculture, Entertainment, and Non-Profit are posted so far.
iii. Totally 9 Challenges had been hosted from August 2019 to March 2021, each spanning 2–3 months. Most of them were Optimization and Prediction Challenges with Prize money for the Top 3 Winners.
8. dPhi (Level: Intermediate)
DPhi is a community with a vision to build data culture and democratize Data Science learning.
Key Highlights :
i. Artificial Intelligence Challenges at DPhi simulate real-world problems.
ii. It is a great place to put your AI/Data Science skills to test on diverse datasets allowing you to foster learning through competitions, to make DPhi a default destination for their data science learning and challenges.
iii. Recent challenges like “Pneumonia Classification Challenge by Segmind” and “AETA Earthquake Prediction AI Algorithm Competition 2021” are critical real-world challenges that you can give a try.
iv. The Bootcamps provides an immersive experience with Data Science and Data Analysis concepts.
9. AI Crowd (Level: Intermediate)
AI Crowd enables data science experts and enthusiasts (Crowdsourcing AI) to solve real-world problems. AI Crowd has hosted various real-life challenges like the “ADDI Alzheimers Detection Challenge” and “Airborne Object Tracking Challenge”.
Key Highlights :
i. The challenges cover image classification problems, text recognition, reinforcement learning, adversarial attacks, image segmentation, resource allocation optimization, and many other areas across multiple domains.
ii. The blog section provides interesting articles such as winning solutions and various DS and ML concepts.
10. Unearthed (Level: Intermediate, Advanced)
Unearthed is the largest community of startups, developers, and data scientists making the Energy and Resources industry more efficient and sustainable.
The most Recent and Interesting Challenge is the “Hydrogen Hypothesis” which expects the users to propose an experiment that demonstrates a use case for the safe and effective use of hydrogen in mining. Submission of Solutions to this platform will be based on Docker. All the users have access to amazing Industry use-cases.
11. CodaLab (Level: Advanced)
CodaLab is an open-source web-based platform that enables researchers, developers, and data scientists to collaborate to advance research fields where machine learning and advanced computation are used.
Key Highlights :
i. It helps solve many common problems in data-oriented research through its online community, where people can share useful worksheets to accelerate reproducible computational research experiments and create executable papers and also participate in competitions.
ii. Most Interesting Hackathons here can be applied as a Proof of Concept and taken to the Industry.
iii. You can either participate in an existing competition or host a new competition on this platform.
12. Numerai (Level: Advanced)
Numerai claims to be the hardest data science tournament on the planet, is Building the World’s open hedge fund by modeling the stock market using the power of Machine Learning and Predictive Modelling.
Key Highlights :
i. It holds a data science competition every week that powers a real hedge fund.
ii. It provides a forum to discuss DS and ML concepts and about the competitions as well.
iii. Numerai provides encrypted data every week to its participants, who then submit their predictions. Numerai then creates a meta-model from all its submissions and makes investments which is a great idea!
13. DataCrunch (Level: Intermediate)
DataCrunch a team of 42-Paris students and a former finance teacher from ESSEC Paris which aims to disrupt the Hedge Fund industry by building the first hedge fund run and owned by a community of data scientists!
The DataCrunch community works by improving the Fund predictions, participants are awarded equity tokens representing direct ownership in the Fund or Cash (200 euros for winners of weekly challenges) as they decided.
14. CrowdAnalytix (Level: Intermediate, Advanced)
CrowdANALYTIX is an Artificial Intelligence platform for retailers, distributors, and manufacturers with the tools and vast network of data scientists to build enterprise-grade custom solutions deployed on a secure, scalable server and integrated via APIs.
The platform hosts a Community Blog that has awesome resources, including interviews, reviews, use cases, and reference materials.
15. RAMP (Level: Beginner)
Rapid Analytics & Model Prototyping using Python (RAMP) hosts data challenges that are a great way to collaboratively prototype and benchmark machine learning workflows.
Key Highlights :
i. Participants submit their predictive solution (code), competing for the best score, and provide organizers with fully functioning prototypes.
ii. RAMP was originally developed as a tool for data scientists to efficiently and collaboratively solve the data analytics aspect of high-impact domain science problems. Since its start, RAMP has undergone many iterations and has been used in teaching and benchmarking machine learning algorithms as well.
16. Challenge Data (Level: Intermediate & Advanced)
Challenge Data website of ENS (École Normale Supérieure) of Paris and Collège de France, organizes challenges of data sciences from data provided by public services, companies, and laboratories. It is supported by the CFM chair and the PRAIRIE Institute. Participant Guide for Challenges is here.
17. Tianchi (Level: Intermediate & Advanced)
Tianchi (by Alibaba Cloud, China) hosts Big Data Competitions for applying Big data and distributed computing resources, Cutting-edge solutions for real-world applications. The challenges often cover Big data, AI Ops, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Object Detection, and many other areas across multiple domains.
18. Signate Japan (Level: Intermediate)
SIGNATE is the only platform in Japan that empowers the AI/Data Analytics talents through Data Science competitions to solve business problems faced by businesses and governments. In addition to the competitions, there are resourceful contents like the Learning site.
19. Grand Challenge (Level: Advanced)
Grand Challenge is a platform for the end-to-end development of Machine Learning solutions in Bio-Medical Imaging. Most Advanced Research Challenges are posted on this amazing platform.
20. Devfolio (Level: Intermediate)
Devfolio’s mission is to help create a thriving community of builders who love making things. They are India’s largest community hackathon hosts — InOut, India’s largest women-only hackathon — wmn & India’s largest Ethereum hackathon — ETHIndia. Devfolio has helped organizers host more than 100 hackathons all over the world, including Blockchain & Fintech challenges.
21. DockShip (Level: Beginner, Intermediate)
Dockship.io is a developer community that hosts online Challenges where developers can participate to get hired, earn money, or skill up.
Key Highlights :
i. 4 Categories: Data Science, Full Stack, Android, IOS
ii. 3 Types of Challenges:
1. Hiring Challenges ( Both Prize Money + Hiring Opportunity )
2. Community Challenges
3. Practise Challenges
iii. The Blog articles are such a treat on this awesome platform.
22. TechGig (Level: Beginner, Intermediate)
TechGig is India’s Largest online Tech Community, where programmers can learn, update their skills, compete with fellow techies in hackathons & challenges and get their dream jobs.
Key Highlights :
i. It hosts a wide range of challenges from Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, RPA, Design, Coding, and much more.
ii. It has both Hiring and Prize money-based Hackathons.
23. HackerEarth (Level: Beginner, Intermediate)
HackerEarth has built a huge community base of 5M+ developers. In the community, HackerEarth is known for having conducted 1000+ hackathons and 10,000+ programming challenges to date.
Key Highlights :
i. The platform provides enterprise software that helps 1000+ recruiters from Organizations with their technical hiring using technical skill assessment and remote video interviewing.
ii. It hosts both Live competitions and Hiring Hackathons.
iii. It hosts a wide range of challenges from Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, RPA, Design, Coding, and much more similar to TechGig.
24. Topcoder (Level: Intermediate, Advanced)
Topcoder is a crowdsourcing company that is the world’s largest open global community of designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers.
The Platform offers 5 Technical Tracks — Competitive Programming, Data Science, Design, Development, QA, and an interesting Blog section.
25. InnoCentive (Level: Intermediate, Advanced)
InnoCentive is the global pioneer in crowdsourced innovation. They help innovative organizations solve their important Life Science problems through technology, science, business, AI, and Data. Here, Problem Solvers contribute to tackling some of the world’s most pressing problems, from facilitating access to clean water at a household level to passive solar devices designed to attract & kill malaria-carrying mosquitos.
These Challenges require real-world problem-solving Skills like sustained concentration, critical thinking, research, creativity, and knowledge synthesis. All the users have access to amazing Industry use-cases.
Special Mention
OpenML is an online machine learning platform for sharing & organizing data and machine learning algorithms.
OpenML is a delightful place where you can share interesting datasets with people who love to analyze data and build the best solutions together by collaboration. This platform consists of a huge collection of Datasets.
Conclusion
Hope you got a clear idea of what each Hackathon platform offers and learning resources to hone your skills. Tried my best to keep this article as comprehensive as possible, but you will find some famous sites missing here — that’s the surprise! Be curious, keep learning and stay willing to learn new things until we meet next time! You will get to read about Consolidated Websites to Find Hackathons in the upcoming articles. If you like this article and wish to connect with me follow me on Linkedin and Youtube. Share your thoughts in the comments section below, what did you find interesting in this article!
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
― Albert EinsteinUntil next time, take care of yourself, your family, your extended family(neighbours) and friends, stay safe and healthy !
✨ Thanks Vetrivel ✨
