## ENTRY IN THIS COMPETITION CONSTITUTES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE OFFICIAL COMPETITION RULES. **[See Section 3.18 for defined terms](rules#18.-terms)** _The Competition named below is a skills-based competition to promote and further the field of data science. You must register via the Competition Website to enter. To enter the Competition, you must agree to these Official Competition Rules, which incorporate by reference the provisions and content of the Competition Website and any Specific Competition Rules herein (collectively, the "Rules"). Please read these Rules carefully before entry to ensure you understand and agree. You further agree that Submission in the Competition constitutes agreement to these Rules. You may not submit to the Competition and are not eligible to receive the prizes associated with this Competition unless you agree to these Rules. These Rules form a binding legal agreement between you and the Competition Sponsor with respect to the Competition. Your competition Submissions must conform to the requirements stated on the Competition Website. Your Submissions will be scored based on the evaluation metric described on the Competition Website. Subject to compliance with the Competition Rules, Prizes, if any, will be awarded to Participants with the best scores, based on the merits of the data science models submitted._ **You cannot sign up to Kaggle from multiple accounts and therefore you cannot enter or submit from multiple accounts.** --- ## 1. COMPETITION-SPECIFIC TERMS **1. COMPETITION TITLE** California Homelessness Prediction Challenge **2. COMPETITION SPONSOR** David Elgas **3. COMPETITION SPONSOR ADDRESS** [INSERT ADDRESS] **4. COMPETITION WEBSITE** https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/california-homlessness-prediction-challenge/ **5. TOTAL PRIZES AVAILABLE: $350** - First Prize: $200 Amazon gift card - Second Prize: $100 Amazon gift card - Third Prize: $50 Amazon gift card [INSERT NON-MONETARY PRIZES AS APPLICABLE] **6. WINNER LICENSE TYPE** Non-Exclusive **7. DATA ACCESS AND USE** Competition Use + Non-Commercial and Academic Research --- ## 2. COMPETITION-SPECIFIC RULES ### 2.1 SECTION 1: TEAM LIMITS - The maximum Team size is five (5). - Team mergers are allowed and must comply with the total allowed Submission count as of the Team Merger Deadline. --- ### 2.2 SECTION 2: SUBMISSION LIMITS - You may submit a maximum of five (5) Submissions per day. - You may select up to two (2) Final Submissions for judging. --- ### 2.3 SECTION 3: COMPETITION TIMELINE Competition dates (Entry Deadline, Final Submission Deadline, Start Date, Team Merger Deadline) are listed on the competition's **Overview > Timeline** page. --- ### 2.4 SECTION 4: COMPETITION DATA **a. Data Access and Use** You may access and use the Competition Data only as permitted under the chosen license type above. **b. Data Security** You agree to protect the Competition Data using reasonable measures. You must not transmit, redistribute, or allow unauthorized access to the data. You must notify Kaggle immediately upon discovering any breach. --- ### 2.5 SECTION 5: WINNER LICENSE If selected as a winner, you: - Grant the Competition Sponsor a **worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicensable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable** license to use your winning Submission and source code for any purpose. - Do not need to license pretrained models or third-party datasets if their licenses are incompatible, but must clearly disclose their use. - May be required to provide a technical write-up and a reproducible GitHub repository. --- ### 2.6 SECTION 6: EXTERNAL DATA AND TOOLS **a. External Data Use** Permitted if: - Publicly available and free for all participants, **or** - Considered “reasonably accessible” under the Reasonableness Standard **b. Reasonableness Standard Examples** - ✅ OK: U.S. Census data, Kaggle datasets, Gemini Advanced, ChatGPT Plus - ❌ NOT OK: Proprietary datasets or tools that cost more than the prize value or are not globally accessible **c. Automated Tools and Platforms (Prohibited)** Use of **AutoML and drag-and-drop ML platforms is strictly prohibited**, including but not limited to: - Google AutoML, H2O Driverless AI, Amazon SageMaker Autopilot - Microsoft Azure ML Studio, IBM Watson AutoAI - Auto-sklearn, TPOT, FLAML, LazyPredict, PyCaret - RapidMiner, KNIME, DataRobot Participants must develop models manually using conventional tools (e.g., Python, R, scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow). Submissions using prohibited tools will be disqualified. --- ### 2.7 SECTION 7: ELIGIBILITY Employees, contractors, and officers of the Competition Sponsor or Kaggle may participate, but **are not eligible for prizes**. All participants must comply with their employer's internal policies. --- ### 2.8 SECTION 8: WINNER’S OBLIGATIONS To receive a prize, winners must: 1. Submit the final model’s complete source code (training, inference, preprocessing) 2. Provide a working notebook per Section 2.9 3. Grant the license in Section 2.5 and confirm rights to do so 4. Complete and return all required documentation: - Prize acceptance forms - U.S. tax forms (W-9 or W-8BEN) - Any other verification documents requested --- ### 2.9 SECTION 9: SUBMISSION TRANSPARENCY REQUIREMENT All Final Submissions must include a complete, fully executable notebook (e.g., Jupyter or Kaggle Notebook) that: - Shows the full pipeline: data prep, feature engineering, modeling, prediction - Is reproducible from start to finish - Uses only allowed tools and data - Is submitted before the Final Submission Deadline **Submissions without a valid notebook will be disqualified**, regardless of leaderboard rank. --- ## 3. GOVERNING LAW All claims and disputes will be governed by the laws of the **State of California**, excluding conflict-of-law rules, and litigated exclusively in **Santa Clara County, California, USA**. Participants consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts.