International Data Analysis Olympiad IDAO-2021 Has Started
The registration period for the International Data Analysis Olympiad (IDAO-2021) is open until March 12. The qualifying round has already begun and will run until March 31. This year, the HSE Faculty of Computer Science and Yandex are holding the Olympiad for the fourth time. This year's Platinum Partner is Otkritie Bank. The Olympiad is organised by leading data analysts for their future colleagues—early career analysts and scientists.
The online tournament will focus on the search for dark matter—one of the few remaining mysteries of fundamental physics. Dark matter cannot be seen because it does not interact with light and interacts very weakly with ordinary matter. The task of the IDAO participants is to build a model that recognises some known observation processes, so that they can be excluded from the search for dark matter.
Tamara Voznesenskaya,
Committee Chair, First Deputy Dean, HSE Faculty of Computer Science, HSE University
IDAO is an opportunity for aspiring data analysts from all over the world to make a name for themselves and to try their hand at real-world challenges from the world of science and business. We are proud of the diversity of our competition participants: over three years, people from all over the world, from Brazil to Japan, have attended IDAO. Unfortunately, in 2021, as in 2020, it was decided that both stages would have to be held online. We hope that the situation with the pandemic will soon stabalize and that we will again be able to organise a marathon of 36 intense data science hours live in our unique atmosphere.
In the qualifying round, which runs until March 31st, participants will be able to choose one of two tracks to carry out the task. The first track is a classic machine learning task, where only prediction accuracy matters. The second track is a task with time and performance constraints. This track is designed to simulate real-world conditions, where not only the solution itself is important, but also how it was obtained. The first round task will traditionally be presented by LAMBDA (Laboratory of Methods for Big Data Analysis) — this time in collaboration with the Association of Universities CYGNO (Italy). The platform for the competition will be Yandex.Contest.
Another tradition is to offer participants the second round task from the competition partners. In 2021, participants will be able to try their hand at solving a case from Otkritie Bank. In previous years, Yandex, QIWI, and Sberbank provided tasks.
Sergey Rusanov,
Member of Management Board, Head of IT, Otkritie Bank
I wish all IDAO participants success in the competition. I would like to point out that IDAO is a great platform to demonstrate your abilities to employers and earn professional recognition. We are always happy to see new talents in our bank.
Every year after the competition, participants and guests can attend open lectures and master classes led by international experts in machine learning and data analysis. Previous lectures are available here.
The last on-site round of the Olympiad was held in 2019. At that time, 31 teams made it to the finals, which were held at the Yandex office. The participants were offered a task from Yandex.Taxi: it was necessary to use data analysis to learn how to predict the waiting time for the next order for a cab driver at the airport and to better understand how long they would have to wait for a client.
Stanislav Fedotov,
Head of the Moscow Branch of Yandex School of Data Analysis
The IDAO Olympiad is one of important events for community development and education at the international level. This is the fourth time that we, together with the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, have brought together cool specialists who come up with new solutions to current problems in Data Science. We hope all participants will confidently pass the qualifying round. We have no doubt that interesting tasks will motivate you to do your best in this competition.
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