The Training you Need to Excel in Kaggle Competitions!

Kaggle is a subsidiary of Google LLC and an online community for predictive modeling and analytics competitions, where data scientists and machine learning practitioners compete to produce the best models for predicting and describing the datasets uploaded by companies and users. Or, to put it more simply, it’s a place for data scientists to come together and collaborate on projects — and sometimes compete. Since its creation in 2010, Kaggle has become a network with more than 1,000,000 users and a safe place for data science learning, sharing, and competition. Kaggle competitions have become wildly popular and competitive. While they are not only a place for famous organizations, like All State and Zillow, to host competitions, they have also fueled new methodology and techniques in data science. They’ve also given organizations new insights from the data they provided. But what takes place in these competitions?

In Kaggle competitions, there are three (more or less) basic steps:

• Preparation: Each competition has a host. The host prepares the dataset and a description of the problem, timeline, evaluation method, and prize.
• Experimentation: In this step, participants experiment with different techniques and compete against each other to produce the best solution results. Work is shared publicly through Kaggle Kernels to achieve a better benchmark and to inspire new ideas. Submissions can be made through Kaggle Kernels, through manual upload, or using the Kaggle API.
• Results: For most competitions, submissions are scored immediately. This scoring is based on their predictive accuracy relative to a hidden solution and the shared on a leaderboard. There are public and private leaderboards. The public leaderboard is based on a small percentage of the test data decided by the host but does not always reflect who will win and lose. The private leaderboard is based on a larger proportion of data and, ultimately, decides the winners and losers.

While there are thousands of data science competitions, Kaggle is the most well-known, most attractive, and industry-recognized “competition” in the field. It is unique in that the participants are often faced with practical problems encountered in the corporate, industrial, and academic communities. Plus, Kaggle competitions offer an innovative way for students to use programming language and machine learning knowledge to solve practical problems. Solving problems, like the ones found in Kaggle competitions, can not only improve a student’s chance at a successful education and career but also promote the development of this industry and even change the development direction of the entire industry.

Recently, groups of Harmony Plus students took part in a Kaggle MoA (Mechanism of Action) competition. In this competition, the teams were asked to solve the question, “Can you improve the algorithm that classifies drugs based on their biological activity?” Throughout the competition, the teams performed exploratory data analysis, feature engineering, and built different machine learning algorithms. In this competition, teams had the opportunity to aid scientists and help identify a protein target associated with a disease to develop a molecule that can modulate that protein target. Specifically, teams worked to predict the response and mechanisms of action that a case in the dataset would perform, and label it with different MoA labels. Teams worked together to optimize their machine learning models to achieve the highest accuracy.

At the end of the competition, our 3 high school teams won 1 silver and 2 bronze medals in the MoA competition — a huge feat that they worked hard for!

These successful groups were guided by Dr. S. Zhang and came from her Harmony Plus Kaggle Competition course. With her Ph.D. in Engineering from Columbia University and her credentials as a Quantitative Manager at American Express, Dr. Zhang is a Kaggle competition expert tutor. Students under the guidance of Dr. Zhang have won 1 gold medal, 6 silver medals, and 4 bronze medals! But in this course, students are not only guided by an expert for a competition — they learn statistical knowledge, machine learning models, and popular programming languages such as R and Python. As they learn these skills, students learn how to use this knowledge to solve real-life problems, as well as by joining the Kaggle competition. This way, children not only learn, but participate in cutting-edge topics, and use their knowledge to solve practical problems.

Plus, students can add their Kaggle experience in their resume or college application materials to strengthen their academic background.

Participation in the competition is not only a unique experience for students’ college application essay writing but also helps students become more competitive when they are pursuing an internship or a job opportunity.

If an expert teacher and an interactive, dynamic teaching environment weren’t enough, students love the course (and Kaggle competition!) as well. One student’s mother said that her student’s desire to study and learn grew throughout this program. “There are dozens of pages of notes! Going to bed and getting up early, saying that she intends to take 7 weeks of lessons in these two days…This is the first time in my life I don’t need to remind my child that it’s time to learn. I just need to say ‘Don’t study, take a break,’” she said. The parents of another student in this Kaggle competition course said that it ignited the fire of learning in their child and they took to studying, even when they didn’t have to. Letting children learn and compete on the same stage with professionals is undoubtedly a challenge, the children adapt and grow, all while enjoying the joy of learning. While before, it might be necessary to supervise the children to learn, this course helps them want to learn and do their best. Seeing the excellent performance of the children, the parents were very pleased and expressed their gratitude to Harmony Plus for providing such high-quality courses.

Compared with pure programming learning, participation in this course and Kaggle competition offer a unique advantage. The classes and competitions are held at the same time, which not only requires continuous concentration, critical thinking, research, and creativity but dedication as well. As they work to solve the problem, children are more willing to learn, learn actively, and learn seriously. Also, children are exposed to cutting-edge technologies and data sets, while their ability to solve practical problems is exercised. Throughout the course, children interact with like-minded people, learn to work in teams, learn to think about problems from different angles, and show their talents to the world. Besides, each student will establish their own Kaggle profile to record their project experience, awards, and rankings. Because of the high recognition and popularity of Kaggle in the industry, Kaggle’s competition experience can help children apply for college and later internships while letting them stand out.

In Harmony Plus, there are many stories and experiences of this kind. This class is just one of them, but the best example of it. The next Kaggle Competition course kicks off in Summer 2021. So if your student is ready to grow their knowledge and test it out in the real world, this course is for them!