Competition Rules

• One account per participant

You cannot sign up from multiple accounts and therefore you cannot submit from multiple accounts.​

• No private sharing outside teams

Privately sharing code or data outside of teams is not permitted. It's okay to share code if made available to all participants on the forums.

• Team Mergers

Team mergers are allowed and can be performed by the team leader. In order to merge, the sum of the cumulative submission in the combined team should be less than or equal to the maximum submission number as of the merge date. The maximum submission number is the number of submissions per day multiplied by the number of days the competition has been running.

• Team Limits

There is no maximum team size.

• Submission Limits

You may submit a maximum of 5 entries per day.

You may select up to 5 final submissions for judging.

• Competition Timeline

Start Date: May 1st, 2015 UTC

Merger Deadline:  June 23, 2015 UTC

First Submission Deadline: June 29, 2015 UTC

End Date: July 5th, 2015 UTC

Winner Announcement: July 10^th, 2015 UTC

Contest Rules

• ·        THE FOLLOWING CONTEST IS OFFERED IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA AND SHALL ONLY BE CONSTRUED, GOVERNED AND EVALUATED ACCORDING TO THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA LAW. PLEASE DO NOT PROCEED ANY FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THE CONTEST WEBSITE AND THESE CONTEST RULES, OR IF ACCESS TO THE CONTEST WEBSITE AND/OR ENTRY INTO THE CONTEST IS CONTRARY TO THE LAWS OF YOUR COUNTRY. NO ENTRY FEE OR PURCHASE IS REQUIRED TO PARTICIPATE. THE CONTEST IS VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. ENTRY IN THIS CONTEST CONSTITUTES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE OFFICIAL RULES.
• ·        Multiple Accounts: It is forbidden to make submissions under multiple accounts, or to have a group of people working as a team and making submissions under different teams.
• ·        About the Contest: The KDD Cup 2015 (the "Contest") is a promotion in which participants from industry and academia will compete to find out whose machine learning algorithm performs best on the task, described on this website.
• ·        Conditions of participation: Subject to the provisions of these Terms and Conditions, the KDD Cup 2015 Contest is open to anyone. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Employees and agents of MOOC-CN Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. ("Sponsor" or "XuetangX"), its affiliates, subsidiaries, advertising and promotional agencies, any other prize sponsor, and any entity involved in the development, production, implementation, administration or fulfillment of the Contest (all of the foregoing, together with XuetangX, collectively referred to as "Contest Entities"), and the immediate family members and persons living in the same household as such individuals, whether related or not, are not eligible to participate or win. The organizers reserve the sole and absolute discretion to exclude or disqualify any participant and/or submission from participating in the Contest.
• ·        Anonymity: All participants must identify themselves by registering on the KDD Cup 2015 website. Participant emails will not be appeared anywhere on the website and will be only used by the organizers to communicate with the participants. To be eligible for prizes the participants will have to publicly reveal their identity.
• ·        Teams：To register a team, for now you only need to register one team leader and choose a nickname for your team. We limit each team to have five final entries. During the competition, a user can not be the team leader for multiple teams. To be ranked in the competition and qualified for prizes, each registered participant (individual or team leader) need to disclose your name, before the final results are released. If one person participates in multiple teams, all teams will be disqualified. Hence, before the competition ends, you will have to specify which team you want to belong to (only one!). Furthermore, one week before the end of the competition, the team leader need to declare the composition of your team. This will correspond to the list of co-authors in the proceedings, if you decide to publish your results. Hence, a professor cannot have his/her name on all his/her students’ papers (but can be acknolweged in the paper). After the results are released, changing team composition will not be allowed.
• ·        Data: The datasets are available for downloading from the KDD Cup 2015 website to registered participants. The data and all other information on this website are restricted to be used for scientific research only. Anyone who uses the datasets and information downloaded from the KDD Cup 2015 website for their research are required to acknowledge XuetangX by using the appropriate logo(s) and credit line on all printed materials, i.e., news releases, newsletters, advertisements, postcards, posters, programs, catalogs, invitations, films, videotapes, electronic transmissions and websites. An example acknowledgement is ‘We would like to gratefully acknowledge the organizers of KDD Cup 2015 as well as XuetangX for making the datasets available.
• ·        Contest duration and tasks: The challenge starts at May 1, 2015 and ends at July 5, 2015.
• ·        Submission method: Please confer to the description of “Make a Submission” page.
• ·        Evaluation: Please confer to the description of the “Evaluation” Page.
• ·        Reproducibility: Participation is not conditioned on delivering code nor publishing methods. However, they need to summarize their methods to receive prizes. We will ask the top ranking participants to voluntarily fill out a fact sheet about their methods, contribute papers to the workshop proceedings, and help reproducing their results. The KDD Cup 2015 Workshop is part of the KDD 2015 conference, and is open to the registered conference participants. The Team agrees in advance that the submitted manuscript from the winning Team will be published in the KDD Workshop proceedings, if the Workshop organizers choose to do so.
• ·        Licenses and Grants: By entering this Contest, the team
•  A. WARRANTS AND REPRESENTS THAT THE ENTRANT OR TEAM REPRESENTATIVE (EITHER ALONE OR JOINTLY WITH THE OTHER TEAM MEMBERS ONLY) IS/ARE THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR(S) AND INVENTOR(S) OF THE ALGORITHM RESPONSIBLE FOR GENERATING THE OUTPUT CONTAINED IN THE TEAM'S PRIMARY ENTRY AND SUBMISSION(S), AND OWN(S) ALL RIGHTS TO, OR HAS/HAVE OBTAINED ALL LICENSES AND OTHER PERMISSIONS NECESSARY TO, USE THE ALGORITHM AND SUBMIT THE OUTPUT CONTAINED IN THE TEAM'S SUBMISSION(S), CAN PROVIDE WRITTEN CONFIRMATION OF ANY OF THE ABOVE UPON REQUEST, AND THAT, TO THE TEAM'S KNOWLEDGE, THE ALGORITHM AND ANY SUBMITTED OUTPUT DO NOT AND WILL NOT INFRINGE THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OR ANY OTHER RIGHTS OF ANY THIRD PARTY;
•  B. grants to Sponsor and its affiliates, legal representatives, assigns and licensees, the right and permission to copyright (as appropriate), reproduce, encode, store, copy, transmit, publish, broadcast, display, publicly perform, exhibit and/or otherwise use or reuse (without limitation as to when or to the number of times used), each Team Member's name, address, image, voice, likeness, statements, and biographical material (in each case, as submitted or as edited by Sponsor, in Sponsor's sole discretion), as well as any additional photographic images, video images, portraits, interviews or other materials relating to the Team Member and arising out of his/her participation in this Contest, any other information or materials provided by the Team or any of its Team Members in connection with the Team's entry in either Contest Track, including without limitation the Registration Information, the Output, and the Presentation (collectively, the "Additional Materials"), with or without using any Team Member's name, in any media throughout the world for advertising and publicity purposes without additional review, compensation, or approval.
• ·        Limitations of Liability: Contest Entities assume no responsibility for lost, late, misdirected, or unintelligible submissions, or for theft, destruction or unauthorized access to, or alteration of, entries. Contest Entities are not responsible for any incorrect or inaccurate information, whether caused by website users, any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in the Contest, or any technical or human error which may occur in the processing of Submissions in the Contest. Contest Entities assume no responsibility for any error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, failures or technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines, computer online systems, servers, providers, computer equipment, software, email, players or browsers, whether on account of technical problems, traffic congestion on the Internet or at any website, or on account of any combination of the foregoing (including but not limited to any such problems which may result in the inability to access the Contest Website or to submit or modify Submissions or Primary Entries in this Contest). Contest Entities are not responsible for any injury or damage to participants or to any computer related to or resulting from participating or downloading materials in this Contest. Contest Entities are not responsible for any injury or damage caused by misuse of the data and KDD CUP posted information. If, for any reason, the Contest is not capable of running as planned, including infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other causes beyond the control of Contest Entities which corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity or proper conduct of this Contest, XuetangX reserves the right at its sole discretion to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Contest and select winners from among all eligible entries received prior to the cancellation according to the same judging criteria provided above.
• ·        Intellectual Property: Between XuetangX and any Team participating in this Contest, the Team will retain all intellectual property rights in its Submissions, subject to the licenses granted by the Team herein.