Hello Zindians!

I hope you are all making good progress in the current challenge. I've been waiting to see someone break the RMSE of 8 on the public leaderboard, but it's been a long wait. The top scientists are currently at 9.1 territories, so they are almost there!

I am relatively new to Zindi, but I have participated in a few challenges over the past six months. My first challenge was the Zindi Birthday Challenge, which was tough, and I didn't do very well. Unfortunately, there were some issues with the private leaderboard, and only the top five got their public scores updated: https://zindi.africa/competitions/zindi-new-user-engagement-prediction-challenge/leaderboard. For the rest of us, our public scores were final

This current challenge has been the toughest for me, with a lot of variables, missing values, and mixed data types. I've tried some tricks, but nothing has worked satisfactorily. I've also noticed that some other contestants have raised concerns about the scores not updating correctly: Here https://zindi.africa/competitions/datadrive2030-early-learning-predictors-challenge/discussions/16489 and here My best score is not used as the public score - Zindi. I also noted that the top guy's scores are updating marginally. Could there be an issues with the platform regarding how the scores are updating?

Recently, I received a message from Zindi that they would take the top 20 submissions when the competition closes on April 30th, cross-check them, and release the private leaderboard by May 21st. I'm not sure if this means only the top 20 submissions will receive private leaderboard scores. The other few contests I have joined, its been that private leaderboard is immediately revealed when the competition closes. Then the top contestants' submission are requested for scrutiny before announcing the winners

I'm just trying to familiarize myself with the platform, so I would appreciate some clarification from @Zindi if possible. Thank you