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Contests

(OP)
Does anyone know of any engineering contests for adults?

RE: Contests

Mind you the obvious thing to do is change jobs. My day job involves an endless series of conundrums that I usually have to abandon without full understanding. Once in a while I do get the chance to do a 'deep dive' and actually hammer a peg into the ground. Those are very satisfying.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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RE: Contests

Was that post meant to go somewhere else GL?

STF

RE: Contests

(OP)
Thanks guys.
Greg, that thought has crossed my mind...

RE: Contests

Oh
A bit slow on the uptake.
In aircraft certification, the prize is the certificate of approval at the end of the project.
In small business, the prize is the check from the customer.
In all business, one contest is getting the project in the first place. The next contest is getting it finished.
Depends on how much you like to see any endeavour as a competition... some people don't.

STF

RE: Contests

(OP)
I was thinking more on the lines of something small scale just for the sake of enjoyment. I love competing, doesn't matter what it is: sports, chess, engineering, whatever.

RE: Contests

Kaggle is a data mining contest website where companies put up prize moneys for some of the contest to entice model builders to put together models for them. There was one an insurance company put up that was to estimate the likelihood of someone returning to a hospital for additional care. The prize for that one was over a million usd. In general, it is a good deal for the companies because they get a model cheaply that is also benchmarked against competition. I entered a wind generation forecasting competition and beat out some people with PHDs that were working as consultants in data mining/model development. If I were a client, I think you could easily get a not great model and never know it.

RE: Contests

Not a contest per se, but I recall hearing about a video game where online participants essentially unravel or decode DNA sequences and/or genetic makeup. As the scientist described it, the task to fully decode DNA is such an insurmountable task for researchers due to all of the possible permutations, combinations, sequences etc......that is, until you put the challenge in front of "gamers" who sit in a bean bag chair all day, eating Cheetos, and playing video games. They essentially work as an army of ants attacking the problem. Its basically crowd sourcing to solve the problem. I apologize for not knowing the details and I am sure that my terminology is a little off, but I found it interesting none the less. I would be interested if anyone else has heard of this or could shed some light on the details.

RE: Contests

Are you talking about Folding@Home?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

I ran that for a while, but I couldn't figure out how a certain stage made changes, so after several attempts to understand it (I probably should have looked at the forums for help), I finally gave it up. Still, it was actually kind of fun, and there have been several major improvements in medicine due to it.

Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

RE: Contests

Reminds me of this:
https://www.galaxyzoo.org/
This site crowdsources various things such as classification of galaxies. So many have been photographed by wide-field sky mapping, but the task of identifying the type and classification of each galaxy seen takes a human eye.

STF

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