{
  "id": 2418,
  "title": "Ambiguous instructions: should submissions have 50,478 or 50,477 rows?",
  "url": "/competitions/MerckActivity/discussion/2418",
  "author_name": "",
  "post_date": "2012-08-23T09:33:45.110Z",
  "votes": null,
  "comment_count": 1,
  "views": 1720,
  "content": "<p>The &quot;submission instructions&quot; page state:</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>A complete submission file will have 50,478 rows (including a header row).</p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>Meanwhile, on the submission page itself, the instructions state</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Your entry must have exactly 50,477 rows</p>\r\n<p>Please clear this up.</p>\r\n<p>This kind of problem seems to come up in every Kaggle competition.&nbsp; These little ambiguities could end of drastically affecting scores--and waste everyone's time!&nbsp; This is a general problem in Kaggle competitions, because the same instructions are often\r\n listed in multiple places.&nbsp; Why not just have one place for each piece of information---then conflicts are not possible!&nbsp; For example, why is there a separate &quot;submission instructions&quot; page and additional instructions on the submissions page?&nbsp; Why are the\r\n menus for each competition nested?&nbsp; </p>",
  "messages": [
    {
      "id": "13349",
      "postDate": "08/23/2012 09:33:45",
      "content": "<p>The &quot;submission instructions&quot; page state:</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>A complete submission file will have 50,478 rows (including a header row).</p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>Meanwhile, on the submission page itself, the instructions state</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Your entry must have exactly 50,477 rows</p>\r\n<p>Please clear this up.</p>\r\n<p>This kind of problem seems to come up in every Kaggle competition.&nbsp; These little ambiguities could end of drastically affecting scores--and waste everyone's time!&nbsp; This is a general problem in Kaggle competitions, because the same instructions are often\r\n listed in multiple places.&nbsp; Why not just have one place for each piece of information---then conflicts are not possible!&nbsp; For example, why is there a separate &quot;submission instructions&quot; page and additional instructions on the submissions page?&nbsp; Why are the\r\n menus for each competition nested?&nbsp; </p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    },
    {
      "id": "13354",
      "postDate": "08/23/2012 12:32:11",
      "content": "<p>I think you're over-reacting a little bit. If you've competed much on here, you should notice that the submission parser will detect whether you have a header row or not and parse appropriately. So you can submit 50,478 or 50,477 and be just fine.</p>\r\n<p>I do agree they could introduce a little more consistency and a little less redundancy in the way they present the information for each competition however.</p>",
      "rawMarkdown": "",
      "votes": null
    }
  ],
  "comments": [
    {
      "id": 13354,
      "author_name": "biasvariance",
      "author_url": "",
      "post_date": "08/23/2012 12:32:11",
      "content": "<p>I think you're over-reacting a little bit. If you've competed much on here, you should notice that the submission parser will detect whether you have a header row or not and parse appropriately. So you can submit 50,478 or 50,477 and be just fine.</p>\r\n<p>I do agree they could introduce a little more consistency and a little less redundancy in the way they present the information for each competition however.</p>",
      "votes": null,
      "replies": []
    }
  ],
  "raw_markdown_by_id": {
    "13349": "",
    "13354": ""
  },
  "source": "meta"
}