{ "fetched_at": "2026-10-19T09:42:18Z", "source_url": "https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/conways-reverse-game-of-life-2020/data", "pages": [ { "name": "rules", "content": "### One account per participant\n\nYou cannot sign up to Kaggle from multiple accounts and therefore you cannot submit from multiple accounts.\n\n### No private sharing outside teams\n\nPrivately sharing code or data outside of teams is not permitted. It's okay to share code if made available to all participants on the forums.\n\n### Team Mergers\n\nTeam mergers are allowed and can be performed by the team leader. In order to merge, the combined team must have a total submission count less than or equal to the maximum allowed as of the merge date. The maximum allowed is the number of submissions per day multiplied by the number of days the competition has been running.\n\n### Team Limits\n\nThe maximum team size is 5.\n\n### Submission Limits\n\nYou may submit a maximum of 10 entries per day.\n\nYou may select up to 2 final submissions for judging.\n\n### Competition Timeline\n\nStart Date: **September 1, 2020**\n\nMerger Deadline: Same as Final Submission Deadline\n\nEntry Deadline: Same as Final Submission Deadline\n\nEnd Date (Final Submission Deadline): **November 30, 2020 11:59 PM UTC**\n\n### COMPETITION-SPECIFIC TERMS\n\n**COMPETITION TITLE**: Conway's Reverse Game of Life 2020\n\n**COMPETITION SPONSOR**: Kaggle Inc.\n\n**COMPETITION WEBSITE**: https://www.kaggle.com/c/conways-reverse-game-of-life-2020\n\n**WINNER LICENSE TYPE**: None\n\n**DATA ACCESS AND USE**: Any purpose\n\nCompetitions are open to residents of the United States and worldwide, except that if you are a resident of Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, or are subject to U.S. export controls or sanctions, you may not enter the Competition. Other local rules and regulations may apply to you, so please check your local laws to ensure that you are eligible to participate in skills-based competitions. The Competition Sponsor reserves the right to award alternative Prizes where needed to comply with local laws.\n\n**ENTRY IN THIS COMPETITION CONSTITUTES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE OFFICIAL COMPETITION RULES.**\n\nThe Competition named above is a skills-based competition to promote and further the field of data science. You must register via the Competition Website to enter. Your competition submissions (\"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. See below for the complete Competition Rules.\n\n### A. COMPETITION-SPECIFIC RULES\n\nIn addition to the provisions of the General Competition Rules below, you understand and agree to these Specific Competition Rules required by the Competition Sponsor:\n\nThis competition does not count towards Kaggle ranking points or medals.\n\n**SPONSOR AND HOSTING PLATFORM.**\n\nThe following provision supersedes General Rules Section 3 below: “The Competition is sponsored and hosted by Kaggle Inc. (“Kaggle”). As a Kaggle.com account holder and user of the Kaggle competition platform, remember you have accepted and are subject to the Kaggle Terms of Service at < www.kaggle.com/terms > in addition to these Rules.\"\n\n**AUTOMATED MACHINE LEARNING TOOLS (AMLT).** \n\nThis competition permits the use of automated machine learning tool(s) (“AMLT”) in the creation of Submissions. \n \nIndividual participants and Teams may also use an AMLT (i.e. Google AutoML, H2O Driverless AI, etc.) to create a Submission, provided that the participant ensures that they have an appropriate license to the AMLT and are able to comply with the Rules. \n\n### B. GENERAL COMPETITION RULES\n#### **1.\tBINDING AGREEMENT.** \n\nTo 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 above (collectively, the \"Rules\"). Please read these Rules carefully before entry to ensure you understand and agree. You further agree that submission of an entry in the Competition constitutes agreement to these Rules. You may not submit an entry to the Competition and are not eligible to receive the prizes associated with this Competition (“Prizes”) unless you agree to these Rules. These Rules form a binding legal agreement between you and the Competition Sponsor with respect to the Competition.\n\n#### **2.\tELIGIBILITY.** \n\nA. To be eligible to enter the Competition, you must be:\n\t(i) a registered account holder at Kaggle.com; \n\t(ii) the older of 18 years old or the age of majority in your jurisdiction of residence (unless otherwise agreed to by Competition Sponsor and appropriate parental/guardian consents have been obtained by Competition Sponsor); \n\t(iii) not a resident of Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, or Sudan; and\n\t(iv) not a person or representative of an entity under U.S. export controls or sanctions (see [https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Pages/Programs.aspx][1]).\n\nIf you are entering as a representative of a company, educational institution or other legal entity, or on behalf of your employer, these rules are binding on you, individually, and the entity you represent or are an employee. If you are acting within the scope of your employment, as an employee, contractor, or agent of another party, you warrant that such party has full knowledge of your actions and has consented thereto, including your potential receipt of a Prize. You further warrant that your actions do not violate your employer's or entity's policies and procedures. \n\nThe Competition Sponsor reserves the right to verify eligibility and to adjudicate on any dispute at any time. If you provide any false information relating to the Competition concerning your identity, residency, mailing address, telephone number, email address, ownership of right, or information required for entering the Competition, you may be immediately disqualified from the Competition.\n\nB. Unless otherwise stated in the Specific Competition Rules above or prohibited by internal policies of the Competition Entities, employees, interns, contractors, officers and directors of Competition Entities may enter and participate in the Competition, but are not eligible to win any Prizes. \"Competition Entities\" means the Competition Sponsor, Kaggle Inc., and their respective parent companies, subsidiaries and affiliates. If you are such a participant from a Competition Entity, you are subject to all applicable internal policies of your employer with respect to your participation.\n\n#### **3.\tSPONSOR AND HOSTING PLATFORM.** \n\nThe Competition is sponsored by Competition Sponsor named above. The Competition is hosted on behalf of Competition Sponsor by Kaggle Inc. (\"Kaggle\"). Kaggle is an independent contractor of Competition Sponsor, and is not a party to this or any agreement between you and Competition Sponsor. You understand that Kaggle has no responsibility with respect to selecting the potential Competition winner(s) or awarding any Prizes. Kaggle will perform certain administrative functions relating to hosting the Competition, and you agree to abide by the provisions relating to Kaggle under these Rules. As a Kaggle.com account holder and user of the Kaggle competition platform, remember you have accepted and are subject to the Kaggle Terms of Service at [www.kaggle.com/terms][2] in addition to these Rules.\n\n#### **4.\tCOMPETITION PERIOD.** \n\nFor the purposes of Prizes, the Competition will run from the Start Date and time to the End Date and time (such duration the “Competition Period”). The Competition Timeline is subject to change, and Competition Sponsor may introduce additional hurdle deadlines during the Competition Period. Any updated or additional deadlines will be publicized on the Competition Website. It is your responsibility to check the Competition Website regularly to stay informed of any deadline changes. *YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR DETERMINING THE CORRESPONDING TIME ZONE IN YOUR LOCATION.* \n\n#### **5.\tCOMPETITION ENTRY.** \n\nNO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. To enter the Competition, you must register on the Competition Website prior to the Entry Deadline, and follow the instructions for developing and entering your Submission through the Competition Website. Your Submissions must be made in the manner and format, and in compliance with all other requirements, stated on the Competition Website (the \"Requirements\"). Submissions must be received before any Submission deadlines stated on the Competition Website. Submissions not received by the stated deadlines will not be eligible to receive a Prize.\n\nSubmissions may not use or incorporate information from hand labeling or human prediction of the validation dataset or test data records.\n\nIf the Competition is a multi-stage competition with temporally separate training and/or test data, one or more valid Submissions may be required during each Competition stage in the manner described on the Competition Website in order for the Submissions to be Prize eligible.\n\nSubmissions are void if they are in whole or part illegible, incomplete, damaged, altered, counterfeit, obtained through fraud, or late. Competition Sponsor reserves the right to disqualify any entrant who does not follow these Rules, including making a Submission that does not meet the Requirements. \n\n#### **6.\tINDIVIDUALS AND TEAMS.** \n\nA. *Individual Account*. You may make Submissions only under one, unique Kaggle.com account. You will be disqualified if you make Submissions through more than one Kaggle account, or attempt to falsify an account to act as your proxy. You may submit up to the maximum number of Submissions per day as specified on the Competition Website. \n\nB. *Teams*. If permitted under the Competition Website guidelines, multiple individuals may collaborate as a team (a \"Team\"); however, you may join or form only one Team. Each Team member must be a single individual with a separate Kaggle account. You must register individually for the Competition before joining a Team. You must confirm your Team membership to make it official by responding to the Team notification message sent to your Kaggle account. Team membership may not exceed the Maximum Team Size stated on the Competition Website.\n\nC. *Team Merger*. Teams may request to merge via the Competition Website. Team mergers may be allowed provided that: (i) the combined Team does not exceed the Maximum Team Size; (ii) the number of Submissions made by the merging Teams does not exceed the number of Submissions permissible for one Team at the date of the merger request; (iii) the merger is completed before the earlier of: any merger deadline or the Competition deadline; and (iv) the proposed combined Team otherwise meets all the requirements of these Rules. \n\n#### **7.\tCOMPETITION DATA.** \n\n\"Competition Data\" means the data or datasets available from the Competition Website for the purpose of use in the Competition, including any prototype or executable code provided on the Competition Website. The Competition Data will contain private and public test sets. Which data belongs to which set will not be made available to participants. \n\nA. *Data Access and Use*. You may access and use the Competition Data for any purpose, whether commercial or non-commercial, including for participating in the Competition and on Kaggle.com forums, and for academic research and education. The Competition Sponsor reserves the right to disqualify any participant who uses the Competition Data other than as permitted by the Competition Website and these Rules.\n\nB. *Data Security*. You agree to use reasonable and suitable measures to prevent persons who have not formally agreed to these Rules from gaining access to the Competition Data. You agree not to transmit, duplicate, publish, redistribute or otherwise provide or make available the Competition Data to any party not participating in the Competition. You agree to notify Kaggle immediately upon learning of any possible unauthorized transmission of or unauthorized access to the Competition Data and agree to work with Kaggle to rectify any unauthorized transmission or access.\n\nC. *External Data*. You may use data other than the Competition Data (“External Data”) to develop and test your models and Submissions. However, you will (i) ensure the External Data is available to use by all participants of the competition for purposes of the competition at no cost to the other participants and (ii) post such access to the External Data for the participants to the official competition forum prior to the Entry Deadline.\n\n#### **8.\tSUBMISSION CODE REQUIREMENTS.**\n\nA. *Private Code Sharing*. Unless otherwise specifically permitted under the Competition Website or Competition Specific Rules above, during the Competition Period, you are not allowed to privately share source or executable code developed in connection with or based upon the Competition Data or other source or executable code relevant to the Competition (“Competition Code”). This prohibition includes sharing Competition Code between separate Teams, unless a Team merger occurs. Any such sharing of Competition Code is a breach of these Competition Rules and may result in disqualification.\n\nB. *Public Code Sharing*. You are permitted to publicly share Competition Code, provided that such public sharing does not violate the intellectual property rights of any third party. If you do choose to share Competition Code or other such code, you are required to share it on Kaggle.com on the discussion forum or kernels associated specifically with the Competition for the benefit of all competitors. By so sharing, you are deemed to have licensed the shared code under an Open Source Initiative-approved license (see [www.opensource.org][3]) that in no event limits commercial use of such Competition Code or model containing or depending on such Competition Code.\n\nC. *Use of Open Source*. Unless otherwise stated in the Specific Competition Rules above, if open source code is used in the model to generate the Submission, then you must only use open source code licensed under an Open Source Initiative-approved license (see [www.opensource.org][4]) that in no event limits commercial use of such code or model containing or depending on such code.\n\n#### **9.\tDETERMINING LEADERBOARD.** \n\nEach Submission will be scored and ranked by the evaluation metric stated on the Competition Website. During the Competition Period, the current ranking will be visible on the Competition Website's public leaderboard. The public leaderboard will be based on the public test set and the private leaderboard will be based on the private test set.\n\nIn the event of a tie, the Submission that was entered first to the Competition will be ranked higher.\n\n#### **10.\tDISQUALIFICATION.**\n\nCompetition Sponsor reserves the right to disqualify any participant from the Competition if the Competition Sponsor reasonably believes that the participant has attempted to undermine the legitimate operation of the Competition by cheating, deception, or other unfair playing practices or abuses, threatens or harasses any other participants, Competition Sponsor or Kaggle.\n \nA disqualified participant may be removed from the Competition leaderboard, at Kaggle's sole discretion.\n \nThe final leaderboard list will be publicly displayed at Kaggle.com. Determinations of Competition Sponsor are final and binding.\n\n\n#### **11.\tGENERAL CONDITIONS.**\n\nAll federal, state, provincial and local laws and regulations apply.\n\n#### **12.\tPUBLICITY.** \n\nYou agree that Competition Sponsor, Kaggle and its affiliates may use your name and likeness for advertising and promotional purposes without additional compensation, unless prohibited by law.\n\n#### **13.\tPRIVACY.**\n\nYou acknowledge and agree that Competition Sponsor and Kaggle may collect, store, share and otherwise use personally identifiable information provided by you during the Kaggle account registration process and the Competition, including but not limited to, name, mailing address, phone number, and email address (“Personal Information”). Kaggle acts as an independent controller with regard to its collection, storage, sharing, and other use of this Personal Information, and will use this Personal Information in accordance with its Privacy Policy <[www.kaggle.com/privacy][6]>, including for administering the Competition. As a Kaggle.com account holder, you have the right to request access to, review, rectification, portability or deletion of any personal data held by Kaggle about you by logging into your account and/or contacting Kaggle Support at <[www.kaggle.com/contact][7]>.\n\n As part of Competition Sponsor performing this contract between you and the Competition Sponsor, Kaggle will transfer your Personal Information to Competition Sponsor, which acts as an independent controller with regard to this Personal Information. As a controller of such Personal Information, Competition Sponsor agrees to comply with all U.S. and foreign data protection obligations with regard to your Personal Information. Kaggle will transfer your Personal Information to Competition Sponsor in the country specified in the Competition Sponsor Address listed above, which may be a country outside the country of your residence. Such country may not have privacy laws and regulations similar to those of the country of your residence.\n\n#### **14.\tWARRANTY, INDEMNITY AND RELEASE.** \n\nYou warrant that your Submission is your own original work and, as such, you are the sole and exclusive owner and rights holder of the Submission, and you have the right to make the Submission and grant all required licenses. You agree not to make any Submission that: (i) infringes any third party proprietary rights, intellectual property rights, industrial property rights, personal or moral rights or any other rights, including without limitation, copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, privacy, publicity or confidentiality obligations, or defames any person; or (ii) otherwise violates any applicable U.S. or foreign state or federal law.\n\nTo the maximum extent permitted by law, you indemnify and agree to keep indemnified Competition Entities at all times from and against any liability, claims, demands, losses, damages, costs and expenses resulting from any of your acts, defaults or omissions and/or a breach of any warranty set forth herein. To the maximum extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless the Competition Entities from and against any and all claims, actions, suits or proceedings, as well as any and all losses, liabilities, damages, costs and expenses (including reasonable attorneys fees) arising out of or accruing from: (a) your Submission or other material uploaded or otherwise provided by you that infringes any third party proprietary rights, intellectual property rights, industrial property rights, personal or moral rights or any other rights, including without limitation, copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, privacy, publicity or confidentiality obligations, or defames any person; (b) any misrepresentation made by you in connection with the Competition; (c) any non-compliance by you with these Rules or any applicable U.S. or foreign state or federal law; (d) claims brought by persons or entities other than the parties to these Rules arising from or related to your involvement with the Competition; and (e) your acceptance, possession, misuse or use of any Prize, or your participation in the Competition and any Competition-related activity.\n\nYou hereby release Competition Entities from any liability associated with: (a) any malfunction or other problem with the Competition Website; (b) any error in the collection, processing, or retention of any Submission; or (c) any typographical or other error in the printing, offering or announcement of any Prize or winners.\n\n#### **15.\tINTERNET.** \n\nCompetition Entities are not responsible for any malfunction of the Competition Website or any late, lost, damaged, misdirected, incomplete, illegible, undeliverable, or destroyed Submissions or entry materials due to system errors, failed, incomplete or garbled computer or other telecommunication transmission malfunctions, hardware or software failures of any kind, lost or unavailable network connections, typographical or system/human errors and failures, technical malfunction(s) of any telephone network or lines, cable connections, satellite transmissions, servers or providers, or computer equipment, traffic congestion on the Internet or at the Competition Website, or any combination thereof, which may limit a participant’s ability to participate.\n\n#### **16.\tRIGHT TO CANCEL, MODIFY OR DISQUALIFY.**\n\nIf for any reason the Competition is not capable of running as planned, including infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other causes which corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of the Competition, Competition Sponsor reserves the right to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Competition. Competition Sponsor further reserves the right to disqualify any participant who tampers with the submission process or any other part of the Competition or Competition Website. Any attempt by a participant to deliberately damage any website, including the Competition Website, or undermine the legitimate operation of the Competition is a violation of criminal and civil laws. Should such an attempt be made, Competition Sponsor and Kaggle each reserves the right to seek damages from any such participant to the fullest extent of the applicable law.\n\n#### **17.\tNOT AN OFFER OR CONTRACT OF EMPLOYMENT.**\n\nUnder no circumstances will the entry of a Submission, the awarding of a Prize, or anything in these Rules be construed as an offer or contract of employment with Competition Sponsor or any of the Competition Entities. You acknowledge that you have submitted your Submission voluntarily and not in confidence or in trust. You acknowledge that no confidential, fiduciary, agency, employment or other similar relationship is created between you and Competition Sponsor or any of the Competition Entities by your acceptance of these Rules or your entry of your Submission.\n\n#### **18.\tGOVERNING LAW.** \n\nUnless otherwise provided in the Competition Specific Rules above, all claims arising out of or relating to these Rules will be governed by California law, excluding its conflict of laws rules, and will be litigated exclusively in the Federal or State courts of Santa Clara County, California, USA. The parties consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts. If any provision of these Rules is held to be invalid or unenforceable, all remaining provisions of the Rules will remain in full force and effect.\n\n\n [1]: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Pages/Programs.aspx\n [2]: http://www.kaggle.com/terms\n [3]: http://www.opensource.org\n [4]: http://www.opensource.org\n [5]: https://www.kaggle.com/WinningModelDocumentationGuidelines\n [6]: http://www.kaggle.com/privacy\n [7]: http://www.kaggle.com/contact", "isPublished": false, "hasIsPublished": false, "postTitle": "", "hasPostTitle": false, "mimeType": "", "hasMimeType": false }, { "name": "Description", "content": "This is a relaunch of a previous competition, [Conway's Reverse Game of Life](https://www.kaggle.com/c/conway-s-reverse-game-of-life/overview), with the following changes:\n1. The grid size is larger (25 vs. 25) and the grid wraps around from top to bottom and left to right\n2. Submissions are solved forward by the appropriate number of steps, so that _any_ correct starting solution will achieve a maximum score. This [article](http://jakevdp.github.io/blog/2013/08/07/conways-game-of-life/) contains the stepping function that is used for this competition.\n\n**Obligatory Disclaimer:** A lot has changed since the original competition was launched 6 years ago. With the change from \"exact starting point\" to \"_any_ correct starting point\", it is possible to get a perfect score. We just don't know how difficult that will be. Use it as a fun learning experience, _**and don't spoil it for others by posting perfect solutions!**_\n\n~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\n\nThe Game of Life is a cellular automaton created by mathematician John Conway in 1970. The game consists of a board of cells that are either on or off. One creates an initial configuration of these on/off states and observes how it evolves. There are four simple rules to determine the next state of the game board, given the current state:\n\n- **Overpopulation:** if a living cell is surrounded by more than three living cells, it dies.\n- **Stasis:** if a living cell is surrounded by two or three living cells, it survives.\n- **Underpopulation:** if a living cell is surrounded by fewer than two living cells, it dies.\n- **Reproduction:** if a dead cell is surrounded by exactly three cells, it becomes a live cell.\n\nThese simple rules result in many interesting behaviors and have been the focus of a large body of mathematics. As [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life) states

\n\n```\nEver since its publication, Conway's Game of Life has attracted much interest, because of the surprising ways in which the patterns can evolve. Life provides an example of emergence and self-organization. It is interesting for computer scientists, physicists, biologists, biochemists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers, generative scientists and others to observe the way that complex patterns can emerge from the implementation of very simple rules. The game can also serve as a didactic analogy, used to convey the somewhat counter-intuitive notion that \"design\" and \"organization\" can spontaneously emerge in the absence of a designer. For example, philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has used the analogue of Conway's Life \"universe\" extensively to illustrate the possible evolution of complex philosophical constructs, such as consciousness and free will, from the relatively simple set of deterministic physical laws governing our own universe.\n```\n\nThe emergence of order from simple rules begs an interesting question—_what happens if we set time backwards?_\n\nThis competition is an experiment to see if machine learning (or optimization, or any method) can predict the game of life in reverse. Is the chaotic start of Life predictable from its orderly ends? We have created many games, evolved them, and provided only the end boards. You are asked to predict the starting board that resulted in each end board.\n\n> **This is a Code Competition. Refer to [Code Requirements](https://www.kaggle.com/c/conways-reverse-game-of-life-2020/overview/code-requirements) for details.**", "isPublished": false, "hasIsPublished": false, "postTitle": "", "hasPostTitle": false, "mimeType": "", "hasMimeType": false }, { "name": "Evaluation", "content": "You are evaluated on the mean absolute error of your predictions, stepped forward by the specified, and compared to the provided ending solution.\n\nIn this case, this is equivalent to \\\\(1 - \\text{classification accuracy}\\\\) across all of the cells. You may only predict 0 (dead) or 1 (alive) for each cell.\n\n##Submission File\nFor every game in the test set, your submission file should list the predicted starting board on a single row. **Values are listed in a _row_-wise order.** That is, if you want to predict a matrix,\n\n 1 2\n 3 4\n\nthe predicted row would be (1,2,3,4). The submission file should contain a header and have the following format:\n\n id,start_0,start_1,start_2,...,start_624\n 50000,0,0,0,0,0,0,...,0\n 50001,0,0,0,0,0,0,...,0\n etc.", "isPublished": false, "hasIsPublished": false, "postTitle": "", "hasPostTitle": false, "mimeType": "", "hasMimeType": false }, { "name": "Timeline", "content": "* Entry deadline: Same as the Final Submission Deadline\n\n* Team Merger deadline: Same as the Final Submission Deadline\n\n* **Final submission deadline: November 30, 2020**\n\nAll deadlines are at 11:59 PM UTC on the corresponding day unless otherwise noted. The competition organizers reserve the right to update the contest timeline if they deem it necessary.", "isPublished": false, "hasIsPublished": false, "postTitle": "", "hasPostTitle": false, "mimeType": "", "hasMimeType": false }, { "name": "data-description", "content": "We have provided 50,000 training games and 50,000 test games, whose starting board you must predict. Each board is 25x25, for a total of 625 cells per board. **Values are listed in a row-wise order.** You are free to create more training games if you desire.\n\nThe provided variables are:\n\n* `id` - unique identifier of each game\n* `delta` - the number of steps between the start and stop boards\n* `start_0` - row 1, column 1 of the game's starting board\n* `start_1` - row 1, column 2 of the game's starting board\n* ...\n* `stop_0` - row 1, column 1 of the game's stopping board\n* ...\n\nYour test-set predictions should be the starting board at delta steps before the stopping board. The games were created by the following procedure:\n\n 1. An initial board was chosen by filling the board with a random density between 1% full (mostly zeros) and 99% full (mostly ones).\n 2. This initial board was evolved 5 steps.\n 3. The starting board's state was recorded after the 5 \"warmup steps\". These are the values in the start variables.\n 4. The starting board was then evolved delta steps. Delta was chosen to be uniformly random between 1 and 5. If the stopping board was empty, the game was discarded.\n 5. The stopping board's state was then recorded. These are the values in the stop variables.\n\n## FAQs\n\n* **Why the need for warmup steps?** The transition from an initial random board to the second step can be quite \"nonlinear\" and dramatic. For example, if a board is mostly alive at the first step, it will be mostly dead on the second. We allow the game to warmup for five steps in order to let the cells calm down and settle into a more \"life-like\" state.\n* **The Game of Life loses information over time. What gives?** Correct, this is a many-to-one problem (many starting states can lead to the same stopping state). For example, many boards that are sparse at the start will end up in the same state (and you will see this in the data). However, over short time scales we expect this to be a minor issue. The largest step back in time in this competition is 5, which we hope is not so far that the degeneracy becomes an issue.\n* **Can I predict any valid state?** Yes. Any starting state that achieves the ending state will achieve an optimal score.", "isPublished": false, "hasIsPublished": false, "postTitle": "", "hasPostTitle": false, "mimeType": "", "hasMimeType": false }, { "name": "Prizes", "content": "**Leaderboard Prizes**:\n\n* **1st Place** – Kaggle Swag\n* **2nd Place** – Kaggle Swag\n* **3rd Place** – Kaggle Swag\n\n**Notebooks Prize**:\nKaggle Swag: Highest Scoring Kaggle Notebook (as determined by Leaderboard submission score). To be eligible for this prize, the Notebook must do the entirety of its computation within the Notebook.\n\n**Eden Prize**:\nKaggle Swag: Awarded to the team holding 1st place on the leaderboard for the longest period of time between Wednesday, September 1, 2020 12:00 am UTC and Monday, November 30, 2020 11:59 PM UTC. In the event the competition needs to be restarted, the Eden Prize dates shall be the new start and deadline of the competition. ", "isPublished": false, "hasIsPublished": false, "postTitle": "", "hasPostTitle": false, "mimeType": "", "hasMimeType": false }, { "name": "Code Requirements", "content": "![Kerneler](https://storage.googleapis.com/kaggle-media/competitions/general/Kerneler-white-desc2_transparent.png)\n### This is a Code Competition\n\nSubmissions to this competition must be made through Notebooks. In order for the \"Submit to Competition\" button to be active after a commit, the following conditions must be met:\n\n- CPU Notebook <= 9 hours run-time\n- GPU Notebook <= 2 hours run-time\n- Freely & publicly available external data is allowed, including pre-trained models\n- Submission file must be named \"submission.csv\"\n\nPlease see the [Code Competition FAQ](https://www.kaggle.com/docs/competitions#notebooks-only-FAQ) for more information on how to submit.", "isPublished": false, "hasIsPublished": false, "postTitle": "", "hasPostTitle": false, "mimeType": "", "hasMimeType": false } ] }