Problem is you can't predict the speed limit on the M4.
$10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway
41–47 of 47 posts
Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway
#42I'm little bit sad to see that HN'ers are discussing the prize and money/time ratio instead of the challenge itself. What happened to the "hacker" in "Hacker News"? I agree, money is a factor - but it doesn't have to decide your every move. This is an interesting challenge whether the prize offered is worth your time or not. The entrepreneurs are supposed to bunch of people who likes solving interesting challenges -…
That's fair enough I guess (I'm one of the persons who commented about the money & IP factors.)
However, there are literally millions of problems like this that you could choose to solve for your own challenge. As I see it, this specific problem is interesting enough but not especially so compared to the total set of possible computer-oriented challenges. Except for the fact it's being offered up with competition, fame and fortune as a reward.
Also, the IP factor seems to imply you can't, say, release an open source project with your winning algorithm and let anyone go away and use it. It seems you have to assign it entirely to the NSW RTA when you're done. That's actually the part that grates on me the most, it seems a lot more "contractor ethic" than "hacker ethic".
Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway
#43I'm little bit sad to see that HN'ers are discussing the prize and money/time ratio instead of the challenge itself. What happened to the "hacker" in "Hacker News"? I agree, money is a factor - but it doesn't have to decide your every move. This is an interesting challenge whether the prize offered is worth your time or not. The entrepreneurs are supposed to bunch of people who likes solving interesting challenges -…
I've fired up R and am doing some exploratory data analysis. I think its an interesting problem and will definitely submit something if I can get decent predictions with the downloaded data.
I've looked at the literature and research has tackled such problems using computer science(neural nets) and statistics (linear regression, Kalman filters). In my opinion, its easier to approach it as a statistics problem than a computer science one and this may explain why there is some hostility on HN. For instance, getting $10000 for a linear regression is easy money (although I would be surprised if the winning entry used this).
Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway
#44I'm little bit sad to see that HN'ers are discussing the prize and money/time ratio instead of the challenge itself. What happened to the "hacker" in "Hacker News"? I agree, money is a factor - but it doesn't have to decide your every move. This is an interesting challenge whether the prize offered is worth your time or not. The entrepreneurs are supposed to bunch of people who likes solving interesting challenges -…
I thought like this for much of my life until I realized how badly the system exploits those who create value in science and technology.
I suspect we live in a world where about 90% of the value is created by about 1-2% of the people who receive maybe 5-10% of the economic benefit. Personally I'm not very satisfied with that distribution but I don't see it improving unless we become less naive about economic/legal/political matters.
Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being from Sydney, I was amazed to see you guys have solved this particular problem on your motorways (time to destination based on traffic). Is it good? I was just roadtripping through.
I have no idea how accurate those times are, I always assumed they would just be basic approximations but you may well be right that they could be more in depth.
When I lived there up to a couple of years ago, they were surprisingly accurate, even during fairly heavy traffic.
I can't recall the exact details, but from memory they use road counters at entries and exits to measure traffic numbers within sectors and, based on theoretical maximum number of cars per sector, predict whether traffic is capable of flowing at the speed limit or at some calculated reduced speed for each sector. The speed calculations, along with each sectors' distance, give you predicted trip time to the various exits on the display.
As I said, don't quote me, but that was my understanding.
Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway
#46I'm little bit sad to see that HN'ers are discussing the prize and money/time ratio instead of the challenge itself. What happened to the "hacker" in "Hacker News"? I agree, money is a factor - but it doesn't have to decide your every move. This is an interesting challenge whether the prize offered is worth your time or not. The entrepreneurs are supposed to bunch of people who likes solving interesting challenges -…
Unfortunately I don't have time to ponder with this (explaining would be beyond the scope of a quick HN comment), but I think that using Markov chains/HMMs would be a nice way to attack this problem...
(Disclaimer: my area of expertise is not ML or AI, but I remembered this from one of the more interesting courses at university and always wanted to code something using it. If you know your way around these fields, I would love to read about other ideas/approaches...)
Re: $10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea how accurate those times are, I always assumed they would just be basic approximations but you may well be right that they could be more in depth.
When I lived there up to a couple of years ago, they were surprisingly accurate, even during fairly heavy traffic. I can't recall the exact details, but from memory they use road counters at entries and exits to measure traffic numbers within sectors and, based on theoretical maximum number of cars per sector, predict whether traffic is capable of flowing at the speed limit or at some calculated reduced speed for eac…
Here is your $10,000