5 Reasons why Data Science at Topcoder was great in 2022

With the end of 2022 now upon us, it’s now a good time to revisit the successes we managed to achieve for Data science. A diverse set of challenges were launched, including a Comet Detection challenge for NASA, to a challenge to classify the position of a device using its sensor data. The key wins Data Science related wins Topcoder achieved in 2022 are the following:

Highest ever average payment purse per challenge

This year, we had the highest payment purse per challenge rate in Topcoder’s history at around $11,620 per challenge! The previous highest averages were $8,480 per challenge in 2019, and $7,454 in 2021. In 2022, the average payment value was almost 37% higher than the previous best.

High Data Science challenge count

A total of 32 Data Science challenges were launched this year, which translates to about 2.67 challenges per month on average.
Although the absolute challenge count was not as high as 2019 and 2020 (primarily because of the Reclamation & Rodeo 2 series, which had an unusually high number of challenges), this year we had a higher challenge count than usual compared to recent years, such as 2018 (21 challenges) and 2021 (28 challenges).

Second highest average payment per registrant

The average payment per registrant this year was around $111, which is only the second time in Topcoder history that this value has crossed the $110 mark.

The payment per registrant values for data science challenges in the past few years were $45.5 in 2018, $103.99 in 2019, $79.7 in 2020, $116.2 in 2021 and $110.9 in 2022.

New Data Science challenge type was created

In the past, the challenge type ‘Marathon Match’ was used to host both - competitive programming style challenges (was usually referred to as Fun Marathons) as well as Data Science live-leaderboard challenges (was referred to as sponsored Marathons). To disambiguate this and help delineate the Data Science track from the Competitive Programming track, we came up with a new challenge type called ‘Data Science Match’. Its tag is now used in all new Data Science related matches.

A brand new Data Science TCO track

One of the biggest changes this year for Data Science was the decision to create a dedicated track for Data Science at TCO. TCO points from all eligible data science challenges will be aggregated under the Data Science leaderboard, and the finals will be an actual Data Science match, involving topics such as Machine Learning.

Overall it was a productive and to some degree, a transformative year for Data Science at Topcoder, and with the changes to TCO and the new challenge type, we’re now looking forward to 2023 being a yet another great year for Data science contestants!