$10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway • Hacker News Board

Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway

#21

Post by sukuriant » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 2:43 AM UTC

datageek wrote: post #4

jjcm wrote: post #3

The competition seems artificially restricted based on what it's trying to accomplish. Why limit yourself to past data? We have immense sources of data for events months before they actually happen. Why wouldn't you account for a cricket match/product release/concert that's scheduled to happen a month in the future?

Doesn't seem to be anything stopping ppl from including other data.

"This competition requires participants to predict travel time on Sydney's M4 freeway from past travel time observations". This line seems to suggest that the past travel time is the most important part of the experiment; however, as one other (rrrhys) pointed out, the data is useless, since the road has changed, and the grandparent of this post mentioned sporting events affecting traffic.

All of that said, perhaps a strong model can be generated using just historical data.

Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway

#22

Post by mukyu » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 2:58 AM UTC

ryan-allen wrote: post #2

Would you consider this kind of action as 'scraping the bottom of the barrel'? In the design community so-called 'competitions' are considered rorts and shunned by anyone worth their weight. What is ironic is that the NSW govt. probably have spent 50 times the figure working with private companies attempting to develop an acceptable solution, and this stinks of a last ditch effort.

There is a fundamental difference between working on a problem like this and doing design work. If you work on this problem you will probably advance our knowledge in some domain and can even apply the results to other problems (such as network routing). Look at the groups that worked on the Netflix Prize. Most of the leading teams had academics seriously working on them.

With a design competition you are basically doing work for free and the only one that benefits is the one giving the competition.

Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway

#23

Post by reader5000 » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 2:59 AM UTC

tgflynn wrote: post #7

I would suggest that anyone considering entering a kaggle.com competition take a look at their Terms and Conditions : http://kaggle.com/Legals/terms Note section 9 which appears to require the winner to assign copyright on the submission to the organizer. Giving up all rights to your code has never seemed to me to be a good strategy for a developer (except possibly in the case of full time employment).

Submissions do not consist of code, merely predictions (at least for the competitions I'm familiar with). I don't think there is anyway they could compel you to give up your code, but I'm no lawyer.

Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway

#24

Post by nl » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 3:14 AM UTC

rrrhys wrote: post #6

A tollbooth was taken off this road about 3-4 months ago that was a major congestion point - 2 years of historical data is largely useless I think.

I can think of approaches that would work despite this.

I'm working at a place that does agent based modelling at the moment, and I think that approach would be perfect for this.

Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway

#25

Post by yters » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 3:15 AM UTC

ryan-allen wrote: post #2

Would you consider this kind of action as 'scraping the bottom of the barrel'? In the design community so-called 'competitions' are considered rorts and shunned by anyone worth their weight. What is ironic is that the NSW govt. probably have spent 50 times the figure working with private companies attempting to develop an acceptable solution, and this stinks of a last ditch effort.

just create a ruleset and run a GA or simulated annealing on them for awhile

Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway

#26

Post by nl » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 3:23 AM UTC

reader5000 wrote: post #23

tgflynn wrote: post #7

I would suggest that anyone considering entering a kaggle.com competition take a look at their Terms and Conditions : http://kaggle.com/Legals/terms Note section 9 which appears to require the winner to assign copyright on the submission to the organizer. Giving up all rights to your code has never seemed to me to be a good strategy for a developer (except possibly in the case of full time employment).

Submissions do not consist of code, merely predictions (at least for the competitions I'm familiar with). I don't think there is anyway they could compel you to give up your code, but I'm no lawyer.

Actually:

The winning entry has to be a general algorithm that can be implemented by the RTA. That means that it takes a timestamp as an input and can generate predictions for the next 15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, 60 mins etc. Results must also be replicated by the RTA before any prize money is awarded.

So it sounds like they are expecting your code.

Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway

#27

Post by dkokelley » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 3:47 AM UTC

gregable wrote: post #16

I've never looked at commute time data before, so I'm just an armchair analyst. It seems to me though, as a driver, that commute times are dominated by accidents. And certainly while you could estimate the mean probability of an accident based on the number of travelers, the daily variance seems insanely high and its unlikely that any amount of training data is going to decrease that much. I wonder how good these res…

While the estimates for < 1 hour might be thrown off by an accident, you could get fairly accurate 1+ hour traffic accounting for accident probabilities, and the time it takes for them to disperse.

Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway

#28

Post by greattypo » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 3:48 AM UTC

ryan-allen wrote: post #2

Would you consider this kind of action as 'scraping the bottom of the barrel'? In the design community so-called 'competitions' are considered rorts and shunned by anyone worth their weight. What is ironic is that the NSW govt. probably have spent 50 times the figure working with private companies attempting to develop an acceptable solution, and this stinks of a last ditch effort.

I think you're mis-applying the example of design contests (which I agree are generally lame, but for a different reason). This is a chance for someone to do a public service and solve an interesting prediction problem. It's for the government and benefits commuters, not some for-profit corporation.

That said, I think this would be a more interesting contest if Sydney showed their current work on the problem and measured progress against it (a la Netflix)

Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway

#29

Post by brc » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 3:50 AM UTC

gregable wrote: post #16

I've never looked at commute time data before, so I'm just an armchair analyst. It seems to me though, as a driver, that commute times are dominated by accidents. And certainly while you could estimate the mean probability of an accident based on the number of travelers, the daily variance seems insanely high and its unlikely that any amount of training data is going to decrease that much. I wonder how good these res…

I would assume they want to build a realtime system and can feed in accidents to change the prediction time for a web/mobile application and/or electronic boards on the motorway.

So in that case, you'd have to be able to input an accident at place x and have that reflect in the projected times.

Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway

#30

Post by brc » Wed, Nov 24, 2010, 3:54 AM UTC

nikster wrote: post #5

ryan-allen wrote: post #2

Would you consider this kind of action as 'scraping the bottom of the barrel'? In the design community so-called 'competitions' are considered rorts and shunned by anyone worth their weight. What is ironic is that the NSW govt. probably have spent 50 times the figure working with private companies attempting to develop an acceptable solution, and this stinks of a last ditch effort.

I wonder why they only offer $10k. It seems cheap, particularly, as you say, they probably spent WAY more than that trying to do this in-house. $10k is honestly hardly worth my time. I guess they're hoping for that one bright high school kid... good luck!

I'll say. There is a lot of work in this, and $10k is not going to attract many professionals. They're obviously out for the talented hobbyist or beginner.

Considering how much the RTA budget would be, it's almost insulting. Just having a policeman sit in a car by some roadworks (so-called 'specials') would cost them about $1000/shift.

The last time a new road project got opened near me the launch party would have cost nearly $10,000 by the time it was done.

The prize should be at least 50 or 100,000. It would be a tiny spec in the budget but that would motivate people to spend some real time on the problem.