Image credit: Dave Austin/Intel® AI DevCon 2018 presentation
Not many people know how difficult becoming a Kaggle Grandmaster really is. In fact, very few people even know what a Kaggle Grandmaster is, much less how to earn that title. In short, Kaggle is the world's largest data science platform with more than 1 million users. It provides participants with a way to learn, grow, and collaborate in the field of data science and machine learning with collaboration and competition, complete with cash prizes.
Users come from various domains, including students, researchers, statisticians, data scientists, and machine learning practitioners. Active projects include everything from evaluating special teams performance in the NFL to predicting the popularity of shelter pet photos.
The Kaggle Grandmaster is considered to be the best of the best in data science. The Kaggle Progression System is designed around four Kaggle categories of data science expertise: competitions, notebooks, datasets, and discussion. Advancement through its performance tiers is done independently within different categories of expertise. Within each category of expertise, five performance tiers can be achieved based on the quality and quantity of work the individual or team produces. The ranking system starts at novice, followed by contributor, expert, master, and grandmaster.
Insights from the Grandmaster
Currently, there are only 241 grandmasters in the world. In our latest podcast, the IoT Integrator Wire editors talk with one of them: Dave Austin, Senior Principal Engineer at Intel Corporation. Austin holds a patent for development of a method for manufacturing a semiconductor component, and he is also Intel’s only Kaggle Grandmaster.
Austin talks about how he earned that distinction and his winning ships vs. icebergs image classification project. He also describes how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of data automation and machine learning, and he offers insights into practical ways that solution integrators can put data to work.
- Listen to the podcast with Dave Austin.
- Get insights from solution integrators and other experts who are building IoT market-ready solutions in the connected world, subscribe to the IoT Integrator Wire podcast.