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COMPETITION TITLE: 2018 Data Science Bowl
\nCOMPETITION SPONSOR: Booz Allen Hamilton
\nCOMPETITION WEBSITE:https://www.kaggle.com/c/data-science-bowl-2018
\nPRIZES: $100,000 and 1 DGX system to the top placing team
\nCompetitions are open to residents of the United States and worldwide, except if you are a resident of Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, or are subject to U.S. export controls or sanctions, then 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.
\nENTRY IN THIS COMPETITION CONSTITUTES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE OFFICIAL COMPETITION RULES.
The 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 set forth 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 described on the Competition Website, 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.
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In addition to the provisions of the General Competition Rules below, you understand and agree to these Specific Competition Rules required by the Competition Sponsor:
\nWinner License: Open Source
\n\nOpen Source: You will license your winning Submission and the source code used to generate the Submission under an Open Source Initiative-approved license (see www.opensource.org>) that in no event limits commercial use of such code or model containing or depending on such code.
\n\nClosing Activities: As a condition to being awarded a Prize, a Prize winner is expected to participate in the closing event activities, which may include; media/press interviews, writing a blog for DataSciencBowl.com about your experience and/or submission as arranged by one or more of the competition co-sponsors, Competition Sponsor and/or Kaggle.
\nExternal Data Use: The following provision supersedes General Rules Section 7.C. below: \"You may use data, other than the Competition Data, as allowed on the Competition Website to develop and test your models and Submissions; provided, you have the right and authority to use such external data for the purposes of the Competition. If you are using a source of external data, you must post the source to the official external data forum thread no later than one week prior to the deadline of the first stage.
\n\nA. To be eligible to enter the Competition, you must be:
\n((i) a registered account holder at Kaggle.com;
\n(ii) the Competition is open only to individuals who are at least 18 years old (or the age of majority in entrant’s jurisdiction of residence, whichever is older) at the time of entry. Minors may participate if a valid Parent/Guardian Consent Form is received. The participants legal guardian must enter the competition by accepting the competition rules, the guardian must fill out the Authorization for Minors form, and submit to the form to Kaggle prior to the competition close;
\n(iii) not a resident of Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, or Sudan; and
\n(iiv) 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).
\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/or 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.
\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.
B. Unless otherwise set forth in the Specific Competition Rules above, employees, interns, contractors, officers and directors of the Competition Sponsor, Kaggle Inc., and their parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, and their respective directors, officers, employees, advertising and promotion agencies, representatives, and agents (\"Competition Entities\") may enter and participate in the Competition, but are not eligible to win any Prizes.
Additionally, any individual determined to have access to the test data prior to the Competition will not be eligible for a cash prize.
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Submissions may not use or incorporate information from hand labeling or human prediction of the validation dataset or test data records.
If the Competition is a multi-stage competition with temporally separate training data and/or leaderboard 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.
Submissions are void if they are in whole or part illegible, incomplete, damaged, altered, counterfeit, obtained through fraud, or late. Competition Sponsor reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to disqualify any entrant who makes a Submission that does not meet the Requirements.
B. 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 set forth on the Competition Website.
C. 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 prior to the earlier of: any merger deadline or the Competition deadline; and (iv) the proposed combined Team otherwise meets all the requirements of these Rules.
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A. Data Access and Use. Unless otherwise restricted under the Competition Specific Rules above, after your acceptance of these Rules, you may access and use the Competition Data for the purposes of the Competition, participation on Kaggle Website forums, academic research and education, and other non-commercial purposes.
B. 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 Data to any party not participating in the Competition. You agree to notify Kaggle immediately upon learning of any possible unauthorized transmission or unauthorized access of the Data and agree to work with Kaggle to rectify any unauthorized transmission. You agree that participation in the Competition shall not be construed as having or being granted a license (expressly, by implication, estoppel, or otherwise) under, or any right of ownership in, any of the Data.
C. External Data. Unless otherwise expressly stated on the Competition Website, you may not use data other than the Competition Data to develop and test your models and Submissions. Competition Sponsor reserves the right in its sole discretion to disqualify any Participant who Competition Sponsor discovers has undertaken or attempted to undertake the use of data other than the Competition Data, or who uses the Competition Data other than as permitted by the Competition Website and these Rules.
A. Private Code Sharing. Unless otherwise specifically permitted under the Competition Website or Competition Specific Rules above, during the Competition, you are not allowed to privately share on any platform other than the Kaggle competition platform, any source or executable code developed in connection with or based upon the Competition Data. This prohibition includes code sharing between separate Teams, unless a Team merger occurs. Any such code sharing is a breach of these Competition Rules and may result in disqualification.
B. Public Code Sharing. You are permitted to publicly share source or executable code developed in connection with or based upon the Competition Data, or otherwise relevant to the Competition, provided that such public sharing does not violate the intellectual property rights of any third party. By so sharing, you are deemed to have licensed the shared code under any of the eligible Open Source licenses listed below.
C. Use of Open Source. Unless otherwise set forth in the Specific Competition Rules above, if Open Source code is used in the model to general the Submission, then you must only use Open Source code licensed under an Open Source Initiative-approved license (see www.opensource.org>) that in no event limits commercial use of such code or model containing or depending on such code.
In the event of a tie, the Submission that was entered first to the Competition will be the winner. In the event a potential winner is disqualified for any reason, the Submission that received the next highest score rank will be chosen as the potential winner.
Kaggle will notify the potential winner(s) by email. If a potential winner does not respond to the notification attempt within five (5) days from the first notification attempt, then such potential winner will be disqualified and an alternate potential winner will be selected from among all eligible entries received based on the judging criteria described herein.
The winner’s list will be publicly displayed at Kaggle.com. Determinations of Competition Sponsor are final and binding.
(a) deliver to the Competition Sponsor the final model’s software code as used to generate the winning Submission and associated documentation.The delivered software code must be capable of generating the winning Submission and contain a description of resources required to build and/or run the executable code successfully;
(b) grant to Competition Sponsor the license to the winning Submission as set forth in the Competition Specific Rules above, and represent that you have the unrestricted right to grant that license;
(c) sign and return all Prize acceptance documents as may be required by Competition Sponsor or Kaggle, including without limitation: (i) eligibility certifications; (ii) licenses, releases and other agreements required under the Rules; and (iii) U.S, tax forms (such as IRS Form W-9 if U.S. resident, IRS Form W-8BEN if foreign resident, or future equivalents).
All Prizes are subject to Competition Sponsor’s review and verification of the entrant’s eligibility and compliance with these Rules, and the compliance of the winning Submissions with the Submissions Requirements. In the event that the Submission demonstrates non-compliance with these Competition Rules, Competition Sponsor may at its discretion take either of the following actions: (i) disqualify the Submission(s); or (ii) require the potential winner to remediate within one week after notice all issues identified in the Submission(s) (including, without limitation, the resolution of license conflicts, the fulfillment of all obligations required by software licenses, and the removal of any software that violates the software restrictions).
A potential winner may decline to be nominated as a Competition winner by notifying Kaggle directly within 1 week after the end of the Competition Period, in which case the potential winner forgoes any prize or other features associated with winning the Competition. Kaggle reserves the right to disqualify a Participant who so declines its winner status.
Potential winners must return all required documents within 15 days following notification, or such potential winner will be deemed to have forfeited the prize and another potential winner will be selected. Prize(s) will be awarded within approximately 30 days after receipt by Competition Sponsor of the required Prize acceptance documents. Transfer or assignment of a Prize is not allowed.
You are not eligible to receive any Prize if you do not meet the Eligibility requirements in Section 2 above.
If a Team wins a monetary Prize, the Prize money will be allocated in even shares between the eligible Team members, unless the Team unanimously opts for a different prize split and notifies Kaggle before prizes are issued.
To 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 act, default or omission of the entrant 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 copyright, trademark, trade secret, trade dress, patent or other intellectual property right of any person or entity, or defames any person or violates their rights of publicity or privacy; (b) any misrepresentation made by you in connection with the Competition; (c) any non-compliance by you with these Rules; (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.
You hereby release Competition Sponsor and Kaggle 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.
Imagine speeding up research for almost every disease, from lung cancer and heart disease to rare disorders. The 2018 Data Science Bowl offers our most ambitious mission yet: create an algorithm to automate nucleus detection.
\nWe’ve all seen people suffer from diseases like cancer, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes. Many have seen their loved ones pass away. Think how many lives would be transformed if cures came faster.
\nBy automating nucleus detection, you could help unlock cures faster—from rare disorders to the common cold. Want a snapshot about the 2018 Data Science Bowl? View this video.
\nIdentifying the cells’ nuclei is the starting point for most analyses because most of the human body’s 30 trillion cells contain a nucleus full of DNA, the genetic code that programs each cell. Identifying nuclei allows researchers to identify each individual cell in a sample, and by measuring how cells react to various treatments, the researcher can understand the underlying biological processes at work.
\nBy participating, teams will work to automate the process of identifying nuclei, which will allow for more efficient drug testing, shortening the 10 years it takes for each new drug to come to market. Check out this video overview to find out more.
\n\nTeams will create a computer model that can identify a range of nuclei across varied conditions. By observing patterns, asking questions, and building a model, participants will have a chance to push state-of-the-art technology farther.
\nVisit DataScienceBowl.com to:
• Sign up to receive news about the competition
• Learn about the history of the Data Science Bowl and past competitions
• Read our latest insights on emerging analytics techniques
![](\"https://storage.googleapis.com/kaggle-media/competitions/dsb-2018/dsb.jpg\")
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"name": "Evaluation",
"content": "This competition is evaluated on the mean average precision at different intersection over union (IoU) thresholds. The IoU of a proposed set of object pixels and a set of true object pixels is calculated as:\n$$\nIoU(A,B) = \\frac{A \\cap B}{ A \\cup B}.\n$$\nThe metric sweeps over a range of IoU thresholds, at each point calculating an average precision value. The threshold values range from 0.5 to 0.95 with a step size of 0.05: `(0.5, 0.55, 0.6, 0.65, 0.7, 0.75, 0.8, 0.85, 0.9, 0.95)`. In other words, at a threshold of 0.5, a predicted object is considered a \"hit\" if its intersection over union with a ground truth object is greater than 0.5.\n\nAt each threshold value \\\\(t\\\\), a precision value is calculated based on the number of true positives (TP), false negatives (FN), and false positives (FP) resulting from comparing the predicted object to all ground truth objects:\n$$\n\\frac{TP(t)}{TP(t) + FP(t) + FN(t)}.\n$$\nA true positive is counted when a single predicted object matches a ground truth object with an IoU above the threshold. A false positive indicates a predicted object had no associated ground truth object. A false negative indicates a ground truth object had no associated predicted object. The average precision of a single image is then calculated as the mean of the above precision values at each IoU threshold:\n$$\n\\frac{1}{|thresholds|} \\sum_t \\frac{TP(t)}{TP(t) + FP(t) + FN(t)}.\n$$\nLastly, the score returned by the competition metric is the mean taken over the individual average precisions of each image in the test dataset.\n\n## Submission File\n\nIn order to reduce the submission file size, our metric uses run-length encoding on the pixel values. Instead of submitting an exhaustive list of indices for your segmentation, you will submit pairs of values that contain a start position and a run length. E.g. '1 3' implies starting at pixel 1 and running a total of 3 pixels (1,2,3).\n\nThe competition format requires a space delimited list of pairs. For example, '1 3 10 5' implies pixels 1,2,3,10,11,12,13,14 are to be included in the mask. The pixels are one-indexed \nand numbered from top to bottom, then left to right: 1 is pixel (1,1), 2 is pixel (2,1), etc.\n\nThe metric checks that the pairs are sorted, positive, and the decoded pixel values are not duplicated. It also checks that no two predicted masks for the same image are overlapping.\n\nThe file should contain a header and have the following format. Each row in your submission represents a single predicted nucleus segmentation for the given `ImageId`.\n\n ImageId,EncodedPixels \n 0114f484a16c152baa2d82fdd43740880a762c93f436c8988ac461c5c9dbe7d5,1 1 \n 0999dab07b11bc85fb8464fc36c947fbd8b5d6ec49817361cb780659ca805eac,1 1 \n 0999dab07b11bc85fb8464fc36c947fbd8b5d6ec49817361cb780659ca805eac,2 3 8 9 \n etc...\n\nSubmission files may take several minutes to process due to the size.",
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"name": "Prizes",
"content": "All 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": "About", "content": "The Data Science Bowl, presented by Booz Allen and Kaggle, is the world’s premier data science for social good competition.
\nThe Data Science Bowl brings together data scientists, technologists, domain experts, and organizations to take on the world’s challenges with data and technology. It’s a platform through which people can harness their passion, unleash their curiosity, and amplify their impact to effect change on a global scale.
\nTo present the competition, Booz Allen partnered with Kaggle, the leading online data science competition community with over 1 million members around the world. During a 90-day period, participants, either alone or working in teams, gain access to unique data sets to develop algorithms that address a specific challenge. And each year, the competition awards cash prizes to top teams.
\nIn 2015, participants examined more than 100,000 underwater images, provided by the Hatfield Marine Science Center, to assess ocean health at a massive speed and scale. More than 1,000 teams participated, submitting more than 17,000 solutions to the challenge. The winning team, Team Deep Sea, developed a classification algorithm that beat the current state-of-the-art by more than 10%, achieving human-level performance for some classes.
\nIn 2016, they applied analytics in cardiology, transforming the practice of assessing heart function. Though the challenge was decidedly more complex than the prior year, this competition received nearly 9,300 submissions from more than 1,100 teams. In fact, the winning team, Tencia Lee and Qi Liu, are hedge fund traders, not traditional data scientists. The National Institutes of Health is further studying results and sharing the winning approaches with the medical and research communities.
\nIn 2017, nearly 10,000 participants worked to improve lung cancer screening technology, submitting more than 18,000 algorithms. Preliminary results indicate reduction in false positive rate of 10% while improving accuracy by 10% over the state-of-the-art. A follow-on competition is in progress to take the advances from the 2017 Data Science Bowl algorithms from concept to clinic, sponsored by the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation along with DrivenData.org.
\n\nVisit [DataScienceBowl.com][1] to learn more about the competition, get insights into emerging analytics techniques, and sign up for news alerts. \n\n**About Booz Allen Hamilton**