These rules (the “Rules”) apply to the EY Biodiversity “Frogs” Challenge (the “Challenge”) and supplement the rules, competition terms and submission guidelines available at Zindi - Challenge Rules (the “Zindi T&Cs”) If there are any contradictions between the Zindi T&Cs and these Rules, these Rules take preference.

The Challenge is conducted by Zindi, Inc (the “Organizer”).

EY refers to the global organization and may refer to one or more of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee does not provide services to clients.

EY Firm means a member firm of Ernst & Young Global Limited.

1. ELIGIBILITY TO ENTER

In addition to the eligibility criteria in the Zindi T&Cs, the Challenge is only open to individuals or teams of up to a maximum of three people who are either: (a) university students with less than five years of professional experience or (b) early career professionals with less than five years of professional experience and who are not employed by an EY Firm.

Participants must also meet the following conditions to be eligible to enter the Challenge:

· You fall into one of the categories below:

o You are currently enrolled in a university academic program and have less than five years of professional experience, excluding internships.

o If you have already graduated from a university, you must have less than five years of professional experience, excluding internships.

o If you have not attended a university, you must have less than five years of professional experience, excluding internships.

· You are proficient in English. All of the Challenge materials and the support will be delivered in English.

· You are of legal age required by law in your country of residence to enter the Challenge.

· Previous winners of comparable competitions run in prior years are permitted to participate in this year’s Challenge but will not be eligible to win a prize.

· You don’t currently work at an EY Firm.

· You are not currently employed by, or function in an executive or decision-making role with, any EY audit client or an entity affiliated with an EY Firm audit client.

· You are resident in Africa and not resident in any of the following countries, regions or cities: Iran, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Crimea region, Luhansk, Donetsk, Russia or Belarus.

Please note that your participation and award of any prizes may be subject to restrictions in your local country or subject to further terms and conditions and cannot be guaranteed by EY. EY will conduct eligibility screening and background checking/screen to confirm your eligibility to participate in the Challenge and win any prizes. EY reserves the right to, in its absolute discretion, deselect you or any entrant from the Challenge at any stage of the Challenge (including without limitation the discretion to decline to award you a prize, irrespective of your position on the Organizer’s leaderboards) without providing reasons or change, suspend and/or cancel the Challenge (or any part or element of the Challenge) at any time.

2. INDEPENDENCE CONFIRMATION

By entering this Challenge, you confirm to EY that, to the best of your knowledge and belief, you, as an individual, do not serve as a director, officer, broker-/dealer, promoter, underwriter, general partner, voting trust in any capacity equivalent to a member of management or an employee of any audit client of EY, nor are you a direct or indirect substantial (5% or greater) equity owner[1](or otherwise with control) of any audit client of EY. You also confirm that this status will not change during your participation in the Challenge. If your status should change, you may be removed from participating in the Challenge immediately without notice and at EY’s sole discretion. You confirm to EY that the aforementioned statement is correct to the best of your knowledge and belief, and you will notify EY of any exceptions to such whether you are aware or become aware of such exceptions before, during or after the Challenge by contacting EY at datachallenge@ey.com.

[1] A person shall be deemed a “substantial equity owner” of an entity if they (i) are a general partner in such entity, if such entity is a limited partnership; (ii) hold a 5% or more direct or indirect equity interest in (or the power, by contract or other relationship, to direct the affairs or management of) such entity, if such entity is publicly traded; (iii) or hold a 20% or more direct or indirect equity interest in (or the power, by contract or other relationship, to direct the affairs or management of) such entity, if such entity is privately held.

3. CHALLENGE DETAILS

You will access the Challenge via (the Zindi Platform).

The Challenge is aimed at participants with beginner or intermediate skills in data science. The goal of the Challenge is to build a machine learning classification model to predict the presence of frog species based on information extracted from datasets.

Full details of the Challenge, and the corresponding data sets and scoring process, will be published on the Zindi Platform at the start of the Challenge Period.

4. GENERAL

You acknowledge and agree that the submission of an entry to the Challenge or any other form of participation in the Challenge shall be deemed as your acceptance of these Rules.

You acknowledge that during the course of the Challenge, you may be provided by Organizer and/or EY with access to data, software or other materials (Challenge Materials). You agree to use all Challenge Materials only to compile your submission for the Challenge and will not use any such Challenge Materials for any other use, whether commercial, academic or otherwise notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the Zindi T&Cs (including paragraph 3.7 of the Zindi T&Cs). You further agree that you will hold all such Challenge Materials (and any other information contained on the Zindi Platform) in the strictest confidence and you will not disclose or publish them to any third party or use them for the benefit of anyone else unless otherwise approved by EY. Challenge Materials are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis without any warranties of any kind, whether express or implied.

You will be automatically disqualified if EY, upon performing experience background checks, discovers that you do not meet the eligibility criteria in section 1.

EY shall have the right to remove (and subsequently disqualify) any entry that contains content that EY considers (in its sole discretion) offensive, inappropriate, objectionable, plagiarized or that breaches a person’s privacy.

EY accepts no responsibility for late, lost or misdirected entries or a failure in the Challenge proceeding due to technical failures, unauthorized intervention or other causes beyond EY’s control.

You agree to give EY permission to record, video and photograph any activity organized by EY, such as personal interviews or physical events in relation to this Challenge (for example, local networking or competition activities organized in some countries), and to use the footage for an unlimited period of time in any online or offline materials created by EY.

EY may request and process your personal data that is collected by the Organizer as part of the registration and submission process for the Challenge, to conduct eligibility screening and background checking/screen to confirm your eligibility to participate in the Challenge and win any prizes. The processing of your personal data is necessary for compliance with legal obligations to which EY as data controller is subject to. You can find further information about the practices EY follows in relation to the processing of your personal data in EY’s Privacy Statement.

EY is not liable for any loss incurred or damage whatsoever (including, but not limited to, indirect or consequential losses) sustained by you during or in connection with the Challenge, except for liability that cannot be excluded by law. You agree that, to the furthest extent permitted by applicable law, you release and forever discharge EY from any and all liabilities, claims, actions, damages, costs or expenses of any nature arising out of or in any way connected with your participation in the Challenge.

You may withdraw from the Challenge at any time. However, the content submitted, or any audiovisual material recorded by the Organizer and/or EY until that moment, will remain the property of Organizer and/or EY as applicable.

EY may vary the rules of this Challenge by posting amendments at any time on the Zindi Platform. All amended terms will automatically become effective one day after posting.

These Rules are for the benefit of the EY Firms. Any provision that may benefit EY Firms are intended for the benefit of all EY Firms, who shall be entitled to rely upon and enforce those provisions. Otherwise, a person who is not a party to these terms and conditions may not rely upon or enforce any terms of these terms and conditions and shall have no third-party rights under these terms and conditions, whether under the Contract (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 or otherwise.

These Rules and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it or its subject matter, or in connection with the formation of the contract between EY and you that incorporates these Rules (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by the laws of England.

[1] A person shall be deemed a “substantial equity owner” of an entity if they (i) are a general partner in such entity, if such entity is a limited partnership; (ii) hold a 5% or more direct or indirect equity interest in (or the power, by contract or other relationship, to direct the affairs or management of) such entity, if such entity is publicly traded; (iii) or hold a 20% or more direct or indirect equity interest in (or the power, by contract or other relationship, to direct the affairs or management of) such entity, if such entity is privately held.

Zindi Challenge Rules

Languages and tools: You may only use open-source languages and tools in building models for this challenge.
Who can compete: Open to all
Submission Limits: 10 submissions per day, 300 submissions overall.
Team size: Max team size of 4
Public-Private Split: Zindi maintains a public leaderboard and a private leaderboard for each challenge. The Public Leaderboard includes approximately 30% of the test dataset. The private leaderboard will be revealed at the close of the challenge and contains the remaining 70% of the test set.
Data Sharing: CC-BY SA 4.0 license
Code Review: Top 10 on the private leaderboard will receive an email requesting their code at the close of the challenge. You will have 48 hours to submit your code.
Code sharing: Multiple accounts, or sharing of code and information across accounts not in teams, is not allowed and will lead to disqualification.

ENTRY INTO THIS CHALLENGE CONSTITUTES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE OFFICIAL CHALLENGE RULES.

Full Challenge Rules

Teams and collaboration

You may participate in challenges 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 challenge, minus the total 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 immediately disqualified from the platform.

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

The Zindi data scientist who sets up a team is the default Team Leader but they can transfer leadership to another data scientist on the team. The Team Leader can invite other data scientists to their team. Invited data scientists can accept or reject invitations. Until a second data scientist accepts an invitation to join a team, the data scientist who initiated a team remains an individual on the leaderboard. No additional members may be added to teams within the final 5 days of the challenge or last hour of a hackathon.

The team leader can initiate a merge with another team. Only the team leader of the second team can accept the invite. The default team leader is the leader from the team who initiated the invite. Teams can only merge if the total number of members is less than or equal to the maximum team size of the challenge.

A team can be disbanded if it has not yet made a submission. Once a submission is made individual members cannot leave the team.

All members in the team receive points associated with their ranking in the challenge and there is no split or division of the points between team members.

Datasets, packages and general principles

The solution must use publicly-available, open-source packages only.

You may use only the datasets provided for this challenge.

You may use pretrained models as long as they are openly available to everyone.

Automated machine learning tools such as automl are not permitted.

If the error metric requires probabilities to be submitted, do not set thresholds (or round your probabilities) to improve your place on the leaderboard. In order to ensure that the client receives the best solution Zindi will need the raw probabilities. This will allow the clients to set thresholds to their own needs.

You are allowed to access, use and share challenge data for any commercial, non-commercial, research or education purposes, under a CC-BY SA 4.0 license.

You must notify Zindi immediately upon learning of any unauthorised transmission of or unauthorised access to the challenge 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.

You may make a maximum of 300 submissions for this challenge.

Before the end of the challenge you need to choose 2 submissions to be judged on for the private leaderboard. If you do not make a selection your 2 best public leaderboard submissions will be used to score on the private leaderboard.

During the challenge, your best public score will be displayed regardless of the submissions you have selected. When the challenge closes your best private score out of the 2 selected submissions will be displayed.

Zindi maintains a public leaderboard and a private leaderboard for each challenge. The Public Leaderboard includes approximately 20% of the test dataset. While the challenge is open, the Public Leaderboard will rank the submitted solutions by the accuracy score they achieve. Upon close of the challenge, the Private Leaderboard, which covers the other 80% of the test dataset, will be made public and will constitute the final ranking for the challenge.

Note that to count, your submission must first pass processing. If your submission fails during the processing step, it will not be counted and not receive a score; nor will it count against your daily submission limit. If you encounter problems with your submission file, your best course of action is to ask for advice on the challenge page.

If you are in the top 10 at the time the leaderboard closes, we will email you to request your code. On receipt of email, you will have 48 hours to respond and submit your code following the Reproducibility of submitted code guidelines detailed below. Failure to respond will result in disqualification.

If your solution places 1st, 2nd, or 3rd on the final leaderboard, you will be required to submit your winning solution code to us for verification, and you thereby agree to assign all worldwide rights of copyright in and to such winning solution to Zindi.

If two solutions earn identical scores on the leaderboard, the tiebreaker will be the date and time in which the submission was made (the earlier solution will win).

The winners will be paid via bank transfer, PayPal if payment is less than or equivalent to $100, 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. The top winners or team leaders will be required to present Zindi with proof of identification, proof of residence and a letter from your bank confirming your banking details. Winners will be paid in USD or the currency of the challenge. If your account cannot receive US Dollars or the currency of the challenge then your bank will need to provide proof of this and Zindi will try to accommodate this.

Payment will be made after code review and sealing the leaderboard.

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 challenge constitutes your acceptance of these official challenge rules.

Zindi is committed to providing solutions of value to our clients and partners. To this end, we reserve the right to disqualify your submission on the grounds of usability or value. This includes but is not limited to the use of data leaks or any other practices that we deem to compromise the inherent value of your solution.

Zindi also reserves the right to disqualify you and/or your submissions from any challenge if we believe that you violated the rules or violated the spirit of the challenge or the platform in any other way. The disqualifications are irrespective of your position on the leaderboard and completely at the discretion of Zindi.

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

Reproducibility of submitted code

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.

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.

Read this article on how to prepare your documentation and this article on how to ensure a successful code review.

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

First offence: No prizes for 6 months and 2000 points will be removed from your profile (probation period). 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 challenges for the next six months and 2000 points will be removed from your profile. If you have less than 2000 points to your profile your points will be set to 0.
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 challenges or Zindi points using any other account.

Teams with individuals who are caught cheating will not be eligible to win prizes or points in the challenge in which the cheating occurred, regardless of the individuals’ knowledge of or participation in the offence.

Teams with individuals who have previously committed an offence will not be eligible for any prizes for any challenges during the 6-month probation period.

Monitoring of submissions

We will review the top 10 solutions of every challenge when the challenge 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). Zindi reserves the right not to explain our reasons for requesting code. If you do not submit your code within 24 hours you will be disqualified from winning any challenges 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 challenges or Zindi points with any other account.

EY Biodiversity Challenge