Kaggle Involvement
COVID-19 Challenge
Your expertise is needed! In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the White House and a coalition of leading research groups have prepared the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19). Learn more.
Kaggle is the world's largest data science community with powerful tools and resources to help companies achieve their data science goals. Learn how actuaries have showcased their predictive modeling skills through data science competitions.
Kaggle competitions provide us with an opportunity to increase the awareness and credibility of actuaries as data scientists and predictive modelers. The SOA encourages actuaries to enter as individuals or to form groups to participate in Kaggle competitions. Best of luck as you continue to compete!
2019 Kaggle Involvement Program Winners
The Society of Actuaries (SOA) is pleased to recognize the winners of the 2019 Kaggle Involvement Program. SOA members participated in data science competitions that challenged them to use cutting-edge technology to build models and find solutions with important implications, such as making predictions at a molecular level to predict interactions between atoms. In another competition, March madness comes alive as as Kagglers anticipate the upsets, call the probabilities, and put their bracketology skills to the test in the Google Cloud & NCAA ML Competition 2019 (Women’s).
In 2019, three members placed in the top 10 percent of their challenges; one finishing in first place! Kaggle competitions are filled with thousands of participants from around the world and the continued success of SOA members in the Kaggle program is proof that actuaries are truly the data science experts that industries seek. Congratulations to all participants in this year's program!
Competition: Google Cloud & NCAA® ML Competition 2019-Women's
Competition Summary – As a result of the continued collaboration between Google Cloud and the NCAA®, the sixth annual Kaggle-backed March Madness competition is underway! Another year, another chance to anticipate the upsets, call the probabilities, and put your bracketology skills to the leaderboard test. Learn More
Member/Candidate Teams |
Final Placement & Percentile Rank |
Joseph Cook-Shugart, FSA |
1 -- 0.200% |
Eric Joseph Sitzman, FSA |
34 -- 6.800% |
Competition: Predicting Molecular Properties
Competition Summary – Think you can use your data science smarts to make big predictions at a molecular level? This challenge aims to predict interactions between atoms. Learn More
Member/Candidate Teams |
Final Placement & Percentile Rank |
Andrew Paul Atkinson, ASA |
123 -- 4.474% |
Kaggle Case Studies
Charles Cadman, FSA, MAAA, CERA, Ph.D.
When Charles decided to participate in his first Kaggle challenge, he figured his academic background in pure mathematics would be helpful in the competition. What he didn’t anticipate was his team of Kaggle newcomers placing in the top ten percent of their challenge. Read More
Michael Xiao, FSA, CERA, MAAA
Michael is ranked in the top one percent of experts across all Kaggle competitions and said, “Actuaries naturally have a good understanding of data, as it’s part of our day-to-day jobs.” Michael himself leads a data science team at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma & Texas. Read More
Participating in Kaggle challenges enables our incredibly talented members and candidates to prove that actuaries can help companies solve complex business problems with data-driven solutions.
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