Hey HN, Grouper founder here. Let me know if you have any questions about the contest.
Is there more description of the data anywhere? Like what does having an "f_number_of_pets" of 7.5 mean?
Build an algorithm to predict friendships, then actually use it to meet people
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Re: Build an algorithm to predict friendships, then actually use it to meet people
#22Hey HN, Grouper founder here. Let me know if you have any questions about the contest.
Is there more description of the data anywhere? Like what does having an "f_number_of_pets" of 7.5 mean?
I just noticed in the FAQ it states, "...several fields have been renamed of course." If I'm understanding this correctly, any real-world conclusions you draw will be completely meaningless, as we're essentially working from a mislabeled dataset.
Re: Build an algorithm to predict friendships, then actually use it to meet people
#23Ping me (b@kaggle.com) if you're interested in running this competition more formally on https://kaggle.com.
We've run hundreds of machine learning competitions & offer a real-time leaderboard to encourage competitive participation, a very active community of data scientists, and many other features that simplify running this type of challenge.
Re: Build an algorithm to predict friendships, then actually use it to meet people
#24Hey HN, Grouper founder here. Let me know if you have any questions about the contest.
A few questions about the data: 1. How is it collected? From a survey, or grabbed from user FB profiles? 2. What is the platinum albums variable? Maybe the number of platinum albums that the user likes on FB?? 3. Why are there some "male" entries in the f_gender column, and some "female" entries in the m_gender column?
1. The data is collected from the user's FB profile or comes from our internal ratings
2. The platinum_albums header is just a joke, we anonymized the data
3. Thanks for pointing that out. There was a bug with a few rows that is now fixed.
Re: Build an algorithm to predict friendships, then actually use it to meet people
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry if this was unclear. You own any code that you write for this competition. The prize is that we'll use your algorithm to validate any matches that you go on. If that doesn't seem worthwhile to you, feel free to pass on this contest.
Do you allow closed source entries? Rewriting an algorithm implemented in someone else's code to avoid copyright infringement is trivial not to mention inevitable given the performance requirement differences between a contest and a production site.
Sure, just take a row as your input and return a boolean.
Re: Build an algorithm to predict friendships, then actually use it to meet people
#26I'll be the first to say it: Your data is either incorrect, arbitrary, or we're missing some information here.
Why does everyone have "7.5" - 8 siblings and 7.5 - 8 "weekly workouts" and 7.5 - 8 platinum albums?
Re: Build an algorithm to predict friendships, then actually use it to meet people
#27I'll be the first to say it: Your data is either incorrect, arbitrary, or we're missing some information here. Why does everyone have "7.5" - 8 siblings and 7.5 - 8 "weekly workouts" and 7.5 - 8 platinum albums?
Specifically, you should explain all the columns, including:
- Is that the person's height in inches?
- What does the asterisk in certain column-names indicate?
- Why do the pets, platinum_albums, weekly_workouts, number_of_siblings and pokemon_collected values seem to fall in the range of 7 - 8?
Also, this dataset is far too small. There is a single male-male relationship and that's not going to provide any significant data if we're looking at genders at all.
I would also argue that it's not the best set of metrics to use to determine whether people will become friends. Age and facebook_friends_count might give you some hints, but I seriously doubt that shoe size has as big an impact on the potential for friendship as, say, common interests, shared culture, income class, or other socioeconomic factors.
Re: Build an algorithm to predict friendships, then actually use it to meet people
#28So basically they are asking people to build them an algorithm that will be a critical part of their business, in exchange for a free service that will be based on this algorithm. Right...
Sorry if this was unclear. You own any code that you write for this competition. The prize is that we'll use your algorithm to validate any matches that you go on. If that doesn't seem worthwhile to you, feel free to pass on this contest.
So you won't use the winning solution in your product?
Re: Build an algorithm to predict friendships, then actually use it to meet people
#29Hey HN, Grouper founder here. Let me know if you have any questions about the contest.
This is the sort of thing I'm personally very interested in, and I have some pretty novel ideas for how I'd approach it. That said, I wouldn't participate in this because it clearly devalues the industry. You should really rethink your approach. Developers who are considering participation in this, I'd suggest you build something for yourself with data acquired elsewhere.
> I wouldn't participate in this because it clearly devalues the industry.
People this may be aimed at:
* Experienced devs in boring day-jobs who are seeking some kind of off-time challenge.
* People just getting into ML and want to solve something real.
* CS students with spare time.
You know more about ML than me, but it doesn't sound like they're looking for a cancer cure; just fishing around for a one-off challenge. Or maybe they're taking names for future interview candidates.
> Developers who are considering participation in this, I'd suggest you build something for yourself with data acquired elsewhere.
Relax, dude. If people think this an interesting problem to solve, what's that to you?
Re: Build an algorithm to predict friendships, then actually use it to meet people
#30I'll be the first to say it: Your data is either incorrect, arbitrary, or we're missing some information here. Why does everyone have "7.5" - 8 siblings and 7.5 - 8 "weekly workouts" and 7.5 - 8 platinum albums?
The headers with asterisks are intentionally mislabeled. Updated this to be more clear in the README.