2022 was a big year for competitive machine learning, with a total prize pool of more than $5m across all platforms. This report reviews all the interesting things that happened in 2022, in two main parts. In Competitive ML Landscape we briefly review competition activity across each of the platforms, as well prize money and the types of competitions that were run. In Winning Solutions we focus on the winners of those competitions, and we try to get to the core of what enabled them to win.
What does it take to win at competitive ML? Just like last year, we’ve partnered with Eniola Olaleye to look back and analyse the previous year’s competitions. We’ll cover just the key points here—if you want to dive into the detail, check out Eniola’s full article here. You can also find him elsewhere on Medium, and on YouTube. He’s an experienced Zindi competitor (previously ranked #5 on the platform), so he knows what he’s talking about!
What does it take to win at competitive ML? You might be hoping to win a machine learning competition in 2021. If so, this issue will tell you just what you need to know! We collaborated with Eniola Olaleye, ranked #5 on Zindi, to look at what winners do. Together we analysed winners using the ML Contests database of over 100 competitions that took place in 2020 across Kaggle, DrivenData, AICrowd, Zindi, and 20 other platforms.