The world’s smartest company?
How 17,000 geniuses are solving the planet’s toughest problems

It might just be the smartest company in the world; responsible for solving some of the toughest problems ever posed – from accurately mapping Dark Matter in the Universe to how to avoid buying dodgy vehicles at a used car auction.

Kaggle – a collection of more than 17,000 PhD-level brains who compete for prizes in solving incredibly complex questions – is using the power of the internet to accelerate problem solving on a massive scale.

Essentially, it’s crowd sourcing for geniuses

Questions that have confounded scientists for years are being solved in months now thanks to Kaggle’s unique approach to data analysis.

The company specializes in creating competitions – with valuable prizes – for its roster of 17,000 “mathletes” around the world to solve. Swathes of data are made available to the Kaggle mathletes who vie to produce the way to make the raw data meaningful.

To date Kaggle has crunched data on Dark Matter, predicting which used cars are likely to be bad buys, improve the World Chess Federation’s official chess rating system, and predicting the most effective treatment for HIV.

Many of Kaggle’s top performing mathletes are British.

Jason Tigg, a London-based particle physicist, finished third in a competition to improve the World Chess Federations’ official chess rating system and is currently coming second in a competition to predict the reliability of used cars.

Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/city-news/2011/11/03/the-world-s-smartest-company-how-17-000-geniuses-are-solving-the-planet-s-toughest-problems-115875-23535234/#ixzz1ciPXx5PA

Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
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