In the early 1990s, a group of volunteers organised an event in the Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe. The goal: to count the animals present on the central floodplain. The first attempt was a success, and the game count became an annual event. Each year, on a weekend close to the full moon in September, citizen scientists head to the park armed with clipboards and camping gear. Working in teams, they walk set transects through the bush, counting all the animals they encounter. The data helps us understand the health of the park, and can give us some insights into the lives of the animals surveyed. And that’s where you come in.

This is not a prediction challenge (although predictive solutions are allowed). Instead, we’re giving you the data and asking you to dig in, tease out the hidden patterns, and share your findings with us. There may be all sorts of interesting trends hidden in the data, and the hope is that by exploring this together we will be able to unlock insights that might escape the notice of a single ecologist or researcher.

The objective of this challenge is to interpret and generate insights from the data from 1995 to 2019 in the Mana Pools National Park.

You are invited to come up with an original visualization and/or a written report using the data provided.

Read more about the Mana Pools Game Count here.

About iXperience (ixperience.co):

iXperience dreamed of creating a university that prepared students for the future, and inspired them to crave challenging themselves and pushing themselves out of their comfort zone.

iXperience started in 2013 as a study abroad coding bootcamp that would bridge the gap between academia and industry. Since then, it's grown into a global operation that has helped more than 1000 students accelerate their careers. Throughout, their focus has stayed on creating authentic connections within their community. They go to great lengths to get to know their students, teachers, and partner companies, which they believe has been instrumental to their success.

Teams and collaboration

You may participate in this competition as an individual or in a team of up to four people. When creating a team, the team must have a total submission count less than or equal to the maximum allowable submissions as of the formation date. A team will be allowed the maximum number of submissions for the competition, minus the highest number of submissions among team members at team formation. Prizes are transferred only to the individual players or to the team leader.

Multiple accounts per user are not permitted, and neither is collaboration or membership across multiple teams. Individuals and their submissions originating from multiple accounts will be disqualified.

Code must not be shared privately outside of a team. Any code that is shared, must be made available to all competition participants through the platform. (i.e. on the discussion boards).

Datasets and packages

The solution must use publicly-available, open-source packages only. Your models should not use any of the metadata provided.

You may use only the datasets provided for this competition.

The data used in this competition is the sole property of Zindi and the competition host. You may not transmit, duplicate, publish, redistribute or otherwise provide or make available any competition data to any party not participating in the Competition (this includes uploading the data to any public site such as Kaggle or GitHub). You may upload, store and work with the data on any cloud platform such as Google Colab, AWS or similar, as long as 1) the data remains private and 2) doing so does not contravene Zindi’s rules of use.

You must notify Zindi immediately upon learning of any unauthorised transmission of or unauthorised access to the competition data, and work with Zindi to rectify any unauthorised transmission or access.

Your solution must not infringe the rights of any third party and you must be legally entitled to assign ownership of all rights of copyright in and to the winning solution code to Zindi.

Submissions and winning

You may make a maximum of 10 submissions per day.

After the challenge has closed and the winners announced the winning solution will become the property of Zindi.

The winners will be paid via bank transfer, PayPal, or other international money transfer platform. International transfer fees will be deducted from the total prize amount, unless the prize money is under $500, in which case the international transfer fees will be covered by Zindi. In all cases, the winners are responsible for any other fees applied by their own bank or other institution for receiving the prize money. All taxes imposed on prizes are the sole responsibility of the winners.

You acknowledge and agree that Zindi may, without any obligation to do so, remove or disqualify an individual, team, or account if Zindi believes that such individual, team, or account is in violation of these rules. Entry into this competition constitutes your acceptance of these official competition rules.

Please refer to the FAQs and Terms of Use for additional rules that may apply to this competition. We reserve the right to update these rules at any time.

Reproducibility

• If your submitted code does not reproduce your score on the leaderboard, we reserve the right to adjust your rank to the score generated by the code you submitted.
• If your code does not run you will be dropped from the top 10. Please make sure your code runs before submitting your solution.
• Always set the seed. Rerunning your model should always place you at the same position on the leaderboard. When running your solution, if randomness shifts you down the leaderboard we reserve the right to adjust your rank to the closest score that your submission reproduces.
• We expect full documentation. This includes:

- All data used

- Output data and where they are stored

- Explanation of features used

- Your solution must include the original data provided by Zindi and validated external data (no processed data)

- All editing of data must be done in a notebook (i.e. not manually in Excel)

Data standards:

• Your submitted code must run on the original train, test, and other datasets provided.
• If external data is allowed it must not exceed 1 GB. External data must be freely and publicly available, including pre-trained models with standard libraries. If external data is allowed, any data used should be shared on the discussion forum.
• Packages:

- You must use the most recent versions of packages. Custom packages in your submission notebook will not be accepted.

- You may only use tools available to everyone i.e. no paid services or free trials that require a credit card.

Consequences of breaking any rules of the competition or submission guidelines:

• First offence: No prizes or points for 6 months. If you are caught cheating all individuals involved in cheating will be disqualified from the challenge(s) you were caught in and you will be disqualified from winning any competitions or Zindi points for the next six months.
• Second offence: Banned from the platform. If you are caught for a second time your Zindi account will be disabled and you will be disqualified from winning any competitions or Zindi points using any other account.

Monitoring of submissions

• We will review the top 20 solutions of every competition when the competition ends.
• We reserve the right to request code from any user at any time during a challenge. You will have 24 hours to submit your code following the rules for code review (see above).
• If you do not submit your code within 24 hours you will be disqualified from winning any competitions or Zindi points for the next six months. If you fall under suspicion again and your code is requested and you fail to submit your code within 24 hours, your Zindi account will be disabled and you will be disqualified from winning any competitions or Zindi points.

Further updates and rulings of note:

• Multiple accounts per user, collaboration or membership across multiple teams are not allowed.
• Code may not be shared privately. Any code that is shared, must be made available to all competition participants through the platform.
• Solutions must use publicly-available, open-source packages only, and all packages must be the most updated versions.
• Solutions must not infringe the rights of any third party and you must be legally entitled to assign ownership of all rights of copyright in and to the winning solution code to Zindi.
• You will be disqualified if you do not respond within the timeframe given in the request for code.

We reserve the right to update these rules at any time.

Note that there is no leaderboard scores for this competition, as evaluations will be completed by a panel of judges.

Imagine that your client is the team of citizen scientists that have collected this data over the years, but do not necessarily understand everything that the data is saying. They are concerned about the animals, their well-being, and what people and other actors can do to help the animals.

Submissions will be evaluated within 5 working days of the close of the competition by a panel of judges on the following criteria:

• Uniqueness of the insights (25%): Did the data scientist analyze the data in new ways and uncover insights and findings that are not obvious?
• Effective communication of ideas (25%): Are the findings easy to understand and well-communicated?
• Statistical rigor (25%): Are your outcomes backed up by data and logical statistical arguments?
• Overall presentation (25%): Is the design of the visuals and the deliverable well-done?

Make sure that you present any findings with the appropriate amount of explanation. Models (if used) should be interpreted and explained - the goal is understanding, not just accuracy. Submissions can be made in any format, provided our judges can view them. Jupyter notebooks, PDFs, interactive websites… However, ALL code used for your submission must be shared, and should follow the Zindi guidelines on documentation etc. Your submission needs to include references to all papers, blogs and articles used.

Please label your files:

username_submission_XXX

Where XXX is a unique ID to identify when your submission was made.

Your most recent submission will be the submission you are judged on.

There is only one prize for this competition. All Zindians may participate but only Zindi users with less than 500 points are eligible to win the prize.

There are no points awarded for this competition.

The prize is one scholarship to a 6-week data science remote program called ‘iX Remote’ from 6 July to 14 August 2020, valued at $3 195 USD.

For more information about this remote learning program, please check-out their website here: https://ixperience.co/remote.

The iX Remote program includes:

• Approximately 10 (ten) hours of pre-work for the data science course prior to the commencement of the 6-week session;
• Course and career development instruction by an industry professional in a virtual classroom for 2 (two) hours per day, 5 days per week for the first 2-weeks and for 2 (two) hours per day, 2 days per week for the remaining 4-weeks;
• Approximately 4 (four) hours of homework per day for the first 2-week period;
• Remote work experience at a company for 3 days per week for the remaining 4-week period, which includes working on a project related to your chosen course, check-ins from a manager and access to a teaching team mentor;
• Additional career oriented webinars throughout the 6-week period; and
• Access to the iXperience community portal and network.

Please note:

• This Prize does not include incidental costs such as data fees and living expenses.
• The winner of the Prize will be required to adhere to all of iXperience’s terms and conditions relating to the Prize, such as signing a participant agreement, attending orientation and attendance at the course and internship.
• In no instance will the winner be awarded the monetary value of the Prize.
• The Prize is unique to the winner and cannot be transferred or sold to any other party without the prior written consent of iXperience.
• If a team (rather than an individual) wins, the team leader will be the one to designate the individual in the team to receive the Prize.

Competition closes on 7 June 2020.

Final submissions must be received by 11:59 PM GMT.

We reserve the right to update the contest timeline if necessary.