Each received the designation as part of their efforts in developing some of the best solutions to the website's crowdsourcing analytics competitions. Learn why three of them participate in Kaggle, and how they became the alpha data geeks that they are:

• Tim Salimans, a 26-year-old Ph.D. candidate in econometrics at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands,
• David Slate, an older computer programmer from the Chicago area, and
• Jason Tigg, a 43-year-old with a Ph.D. in elementary particle physics from Oxford who is based in London, where he works trading statistical arbitrage in finance.

Salimans, who runs and plays a number of competitive sports, finds that "It's mostly the competitive element of Kaggle that motivates me. I just like to be challenged this way." The online leaderboard is another way. "The direct feedback it provides is quite unique in the area of data analysis and gives you a lot of motivation."

But it helps to have some fame, too. After he won his first competition (a chess rating challenge), he was contacted by Thore Graepel of Microsoft Research, and ended up interning with him. But Kaggle also shortcuts the traditional academic review process to publish his work: "Publishing an academic article is a very slow and tedious process that commonly takes over a year in my field, while the descriptions of my winning entries in the Kaggle competitions get read by a similar number of people and only take an hour to write."

Another top 10 winner is David Slate. He has been a computer programmer for nearly 50 years after getting degrees in physics. He has been doing predictive analytics for several decades and is retired now. His team at Northwestern University won the World Computer Chess Championship from 1977 to 1980. He developed a credit-card fraud detection system that is still in commercial use. Most of his contests have been jointly entered with Peter Frey under the team name "Old Dogs With New Tricks."

"Every contest is fun and has interesting data. I like to apply my skills to solve some real problems and especially in the medical area." Slate is in his 60s, which he touts as an advantage. "We can bring an impressive amount of geezer power to bear on the problem," he told me. "We have also developed our own software tools for predictive analytics, too."

It also helps to be persistent because "there is a lot of trial and error, and the contests require a fair amount of time to spend on them." Slate mentions that he often tweaks his algorithms daily, trying new tactics. It certainly helps not having a day job to distract him from his contests!

Kaggle has been around for two years now and has had more than 33,000 participants from around the world. Competitions may have cash prizes attached to them, or can be used by college students as part of an in-class homework assignment. We have written about them before doing some very innovative things. Naming their top 10 scientists just seems so appropriate, given how they instantly track the leading entries to all of their contests.

Back when I was in my graduate statistics classes, I had no idea that the world of data science could be the wonderful and exciting place that it is now. In that era, we were slaves to problem sets, basically an upgrade to fifth-grade arithmetic homework assignments where you got a problem and had to show your work toward the solution. Can you say boring? It is no wonder that even Barbie thinks math is too tough.

But thanks to Kaggle in Class, students around the world have the opportunity to make math more fun, or at least more socially engaging. Salimans told me that he "first used Kaggle in Class last year, and I have never seen the students so enthusiastic about a class assignment. A lot of them worked on it for two weeks straight up to the deadline, while I had had trouble motivating them for some of the earlier assignments. An in-class competition is also great at getting the students to develop some real practical understanding of the different methods, in a way that most computer assignments fail to do."

Jason Tigg, meahwhile, started doing assembly language programming as a teen, building a program to play Othello. He has done well on several Kaggle contests, including Photo Quality Prediction competition and the Claim Prediction Challenge.

"My two biggest motivations are fun and learning," he said. "I feel lucky to be living through this chapter in history where machine intelligence is ramping up so rapidly. I feel a buzz around the area, which I imagine was how physics felt around the turn of the last century. People are trying out new ideas, and no one knows for sure where we will all end up." He has entered a variety of competitions, with the goal of increasing his knowledge about new machine-learning techniques. That said, he looks at the leaderboard because it is "extremely useful for judging how much you are missing, and how much you need to learn."

Tigg also busted the myth about how much computing power you need to solve the contest's problems, "Do not worry about needing huge amounts of compute power, it is possible to do well in these competitions with very cheap setups."

So good work to everyone who has entered Kaggle and other data science contests. Hopefully you can find inspiration from these three who have risen to the top!

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

Dig deep into the recesses of your brain (or your favorite search engine), and answer via the comments on this post. The best answer, according to RWW staff, wins the prize of the day, kindly donated by ThinkGeek.

The Prize: Everything is Better with Bacon

What better way to celebrate the Internet than with a talking bacon plush toy. For the bacon enthusiast that has everything... we bet you don't have one of these, at least not yet. You can give it your child, or display it proudly at your workplace to let your co-workers bask in the glow of your love of bacon.

Yes, it's extremely silly. What better way to reward a command of trivia? The theme today? Women in computing.

ENIAC

IT is heavily skewed towards men, but it hasn't always been that way. In fact, the first all-electronic, digital computer was the ENIAC, a monster of a machine that was designed to calculate ballistics trajectories.

Kay Antonelli, Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence, and Ruth Teitelbaum were the six "computers" chosen to work with the ENIAC by the Army. Prior to ENIAC, the team were working on calculating trajectories by hand. Today we tell people to Read The Fine Manual (RTFM) but that wasn't an option for the first team (Meltzer and Teitelbaum). The ENIAC may have been a marvel of modern (at the time) engineering, but all the ENIAC team had to work with were diagrams to figure out how to make the thing work.

Grace Hopper

On the Navy side, we can thank Admiral Grace Murray Hopper for several contributions to the field of computer science, not least of which coining the term "bug."

Hopper earned a degree in mathematics from Vassar in 1928, and earned a Ph.D. from Yale in 1934. She taught mathematics at Vassar until 1943, when she resigned to enlist in the Navy. She was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, and worked with the Mark I "electromechanical computing machine." She continued her work through the end of the war, and then joined Harvard as a research fellow.

Hopper joined Eckert-Mauchly Corporation in 1949, which was a company founded by people who built the ENIAC. In 1953, Hopper invented the first compiler in the hopes that "the programmer may return to being a mathematician." We're not quite sure how well that worked out, but Hopper's invention was a major leap forward. According to Wikipedia, Hopper also had a hand in the development of COBOL.

Mary Allen Wilkes

Mary Allen Wilkes, who worked in MIT's Lincoln Laboratory from 1959 through 1963, is notable for a few achievements. First, Wilkes is known for developing the "assembler-linker" model that is used by modern compilers. She's also the inventor of the first operating system (LAP) for the LINC computer.

But where Wilkes did her computing is almost as noteworthy as her other contributions: She's arguably one of the first people to use a home computer, which she built.

Alas, computing was not her final destination – Wilkes went on to become an attorney in Cambridge, Mass.

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace, or Augusta Ada King the Countess of Lovelace, is widely acknowledged as the world's first computer programmer. She was born in 1815, long before computers were a household items.

Many people can thank their parents for instilling them with an interest in computers, but Lovelace's father was not a computer jockey. In fact, he's notable for a different reason altogether. So here's your trivia challenge: who was Lovelace's father, and what was he famous for?

Submit your answer in the comments to this post, and we'll announce the winner tomorrow. Good luck!

Update: Congratulations to user "veryedgy," who submitted the best answer and won the talking bacon plush toy. Stay tuned the rest of the week for more trivia and more chances to win.

Today's installment of trivia is general in nature, but will offer you a chance to win a companion worthy of your love. The companion cube from Portal, that many of you have already met and incinerated dozens of times, is today's prize. Warning, she is not really safe up to 4000 degrees Kelvin.

The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Companion Cube cannot speak. In the event that the Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice. -- GLaDOS, Portal

The Driest Continent

Ever wonder which continent is most likely to dehydrate? Antarctica wins the prize for the most parched of the 7. Take heart though, if her ice sheets melted, the oceans of the world would be 200 feet higher. Source: Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, page 340, photo from Mike White on McMurdodo Dry Valleys

Green Potatoes Are Deadly

Potatoes are a member of the nightshade family (yes, the same family that offers up the Nightshade flowers that are so very useful in your Elder Scrolls plant collecting), and as such, do have a deadly component, Solanine. While small quantities of solanine are found throughout the plant, green areas on the tuber have higher concentrations. This is because green indicates the potato has been exposed to the sun, causing increased production of solanine (and harmless chlorophyll). Unless you actively attempt to poison yourself though, you're probably safe. You'd have to eat several pounds of green potatoes to see symptoms. Source: Wikipedia, Snopes and photo from Ask Julie

The Lydians Invented Money

As we all purchase our holiday gifts this year with money rather than chickens and goats, we should thank the Lydians, who are the first to coin money. That's, of course, as far as historians know, and certainly depends on the definition of the word 'coin', but remember, if the Lydians weren't the first, they were certainly the first to spread their coin around. Source: Exeter and photo from Numismatics

Which 3 Technological Advances Made the Age of Skyscrapers Possible?

Do you think you know all three? If so, submit your answer in the comments on this post. We'll announce the winner of the mute but cuddly Companion Cube tomorrow.

Congratulations to Andrew Orr, who submitted the best answer and won the Companion Cube. Stay tuned the rest of the week for more Trivia.

Last year, KFC started the first-ever Twitter scholarship where students had to tweet why they deserved the money in 140 characters or less. The winner was California high school senior Amanda Russell, who won with this tweet: "Hey Colonel! Your scholarship's the secret ingredient missing from my recipe for success! Got the grades, drive, just need cash!" She is now attending UCLA.

Students have to have a minimum cumulative high school GPA of 2.75 and plan to pursue a bachelor's degree next fall. Only US citizens or permanent residents can apply. So get out your cameras today and start posting! If you aren't artistic and want another chance to win, you can enter online here at the KFC Scholars website before February 1 for one of 75 separate $20k scholarships.

Meyers, senior business systems analyst for a government contractor, responded to "tell us how you won management over to virtualization." Meyers provided an in-depth response that contest judge Roger Levy, SVP of product at Engine Yard, deamed worthy of a MacBook Air.

May, a software engineer for an education company in Provo, UT, responded to our query about the most successful virtualization projects. OpenStack contributor Rick Clark judged this one for us, and chose May's lengthy and detailed response that covers working with virtualization in the education space.

If you're not Meyers or May, though, this is your last chance of the year to win a MacBook Air from ReadWriteCloud. Head over to the November contest page, and answer the question: "What workloads are you running under virtualization, and what are you holding back?" (Be sure to comment on the original contest page, not this one!)

All you need is a Disqus account, and be sure to read the contest rules. The contest is extended through Sunday, November 27th at 11:59 (Eastern). We're looking forward to your responses – don't delay!

That's the question for ReadWriteCloud's October contest. Virtualization providers like VMware and hardware partners like Intel say that almost all workloads are suitable for virtualization. What workloads are you running under virtualzation today, and what are you holding back? Do you have workloads you're worried about moving to virtualization? If so – why?

The prize? A light, sleek MacBook Air. All you need to do is submit the best comment right here on this post, and you'll be taking home a MacBook Air! Participating is easy, you just need a Disqus account, and make sure you follow the rules.

We know ReadWriteCloud readers have been tackling virtualization projects for years. But lots of organizations have held back some of their workloads, and we'd like to know what, and why. We're also encouraging readers to participate in our poll, but don't delay – the poll and contest close on November 20th. But be sure to respond in the comments as well, to get a chance to win a sweet MacBook Air.

To win, you need to comment by end of day, November 20th. We'll announce the winner shortly thereafter. You can't win if you don't respond, so fire up the keyboard and let us know what made your most successful virtualization project a winner. We're eager to read your responses!

Update: We have a winner. The best response is from David Adams, who's the CTO of a startup software company that makes automation systems for the travel industry. (VIP Event Resources.) Congrats, David!

That's the question for ReadWriteCloud's October contest. The prize? A light, sleek MacBook Air. All you need to do is submit the best comment right here on this post, and you'll be taking home a MacBook Air – just like Julie Begey, who won the September contest. Participating is easy, you just need a Disqus account, and make sure you follow the rules.

We know ReadWriteCloud readers have been tackling virtualization projects for years. Now you have a chance to cash in on that experience by telling us which implementations have been most successful, and why. We all know that cost is a huge factor, so go a bit deeper (as Begey did with her response in September) and tell us more.

To win, you need to comment by October 25th. We'll announce the winner shortly thereafter. You can't win if you don't respond, so fire up the keyboard and let us know what made your most successful virtualization project a winner. We're eager to read your responses!

It's now 7 years after the term Web 2.0 was coined and, in association with HP LaserJet, we're running a contest to survey what (if anything) it means to you nowadays. Simply leave a comment here on ReadWriteWeb and the winner receives a $500 home office upgrade.

Contest Rules

You can read the full rules of the contest on this webpage, but here a few of the main points:

1) You must be a U.S. resident and at least 18 years of age to enter.

2) The Contest begins on October 10, 2011 at 12:00 p.m. ET and ends on October 21, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

3) To enter, simply leave a comment on ReadWriteWeb in the discussions area below. Be sure to enter your email address. The submission must be at least 25 words and no longer than 300 words.

To get your creative juices going, here is a brief history of Web 2.0 along with my own thoughts on its relevancy today.

A Brief History of Web 2.0

The term began as a moniker for a conference and grew into something much larger. Even as early as the first conference, in October 2004, the term was starting to assume a deeper meaning. I interviewed Tim O'Reilly in November 2004 and we had a long and fruitful discussion about the early themes in Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is still a moniker for a conference brand, only now it's two separate events: Web 2.0 Summit and Web 2.0 Expo. So as a conference brand at least, it's still very relevant.

As a description of a larger trend, Web 2.0 has evolved over the years. In September 2005, Tim O'Reilly published the definitive article defining Web 2.0. The core principle is that Web 2.0 is "The Web as Platform." The rest of the definition is expansive and difficult to summarize in a sentence or two. The following meme map attempted to bring it all together in one visual bite:

In October 2009, Web 2.0 got a refresh with the help of a new term: Web Squared. Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle co-authored an article, which explained that Web 2.0 was (in 2009) "being applied in areas we only imagined in 2004." Areas like smartphones, new "collective intelligence applications" like Twitter, and sensors. Web 2.0 was also being applied to real-world problems, such as health care.

The latest evolution is a Web 2.0 Map, which the organizers of the Web 2.0 Summit have developed over the past two years.

So, with all that said, what does Web 2.0 mean to me today?

The term "Web 2.0" is first and foremost the brand name of a tech conference. That's how the term was born and that's what still drives it. But regardless of its commercial usage, fundamentally I think we are still in the same era of the Web. Something important changed around 2003-2004, both in terms of a tech market re-birth and in the types of technology that were beginning to become popular.

I have always used the term "read/write Web" to signify what I believe was the essential change back in 03/04: the Web matured as a two-way system, enabling more and more people to 'write' to the Web as well as 'read' it. Tools like blogs and wikis, services like YouTube and Flickr, popular websites like Wikipedia and Amazon.com.

By 03/04, the Web had evolved from a broadcasting medium to a fully interactive one. That overarching trend has continued to evolve to this day. Today the Web is more social, more real-time, more mobile - among many other wonderful twists and turns.

That's what Web 2.0 means to me today, now let us know what it means to you. A $500 home office upgrade will be awarded to the person whose answer shows the most insight and creativity (as judged by a panel of qualified judges). Be in to win by leaving your comment below.

Update: Congratulations to Brittany Smith, from Portland, who wrote the winning comment and receives a $500 gift voucher. Thanks everyone who entered.

All you need to participate is a Disqus account and to leave a comment on the original post announcing the contest.

This contest is being judged by Roger Levy, SVP of product at Engine Yard. Levy has more than 30 years of experience leading the design, development and support of high tech products and services including development tools, enterprise software, operating systems, mobility and data networking. After the contest closes, Levy will look over all the responses and choose the best answer.

The window to comment closes on September 30th, so don't delay! Tell us how you won management over to virtualization, and you might be the proud owner of a MacBook Air. We're looking forward to your responses!

That's the question for our latest ReadWriteWeb Cloud contest. The prize? A light-as-a-feather MacBook Air. All you need to do is submit the best comment right here on this post, and you'll be taking home a MacBook Air. Participating is easy, you just need a Disqus account, and make sure you follow the rules.

We know that ReadWriteCloud readers have been persuading management to take on virtualization projects for years, so we're keen to know – what reasons won over management? Let us know what made your management jump for virtualization, and you have a good shot at winning a MacBook Air.

To win, you need to comment by September 30th. We'll announce the winner shortly thereafter. You can't win if you don't respond, so fire up the keyboard and let us know how you won management over to virtualization. We're looking forward to your responses!

You answered, and we had Erica Brescia of BitRock do the judging. We got a bunch of great responses, but only one person could win – and that was Michael Schade. Schade's picks for top three features? Policies, preconfigured images, and a robust API. (He had more to say, of course – head over to the post and check it out!)

Congrats to Schade on the big win for August. Now who's going to win the first MacBook Air for September? We're giving away another MacBook Air to the best response to this question, "What suggestions do you have for implementing Big Data sorts of projects using virtualization?"

You have until September 15 to answer the question, so don't delay. Judging this contest is Edward L. Haletky, CEO of the Virtualization Practice. Be sure to check out the read the rules, and then get to commenting! All you need is a Disqus account to participate.

The campaign, started by three advertising creatives, will recognize the state of Kentucky as the birthplace of the Happy Birthday song among other feel-good homages to the Bluegrass State.

Whit Hiler, who co-founded the effort with buddies Kent Carmichael and Griffin Vanmeter, says that so far Kentucky for Kentucky has raised $2,600. They have set the go-ahead funding level at $3.5 million. They hope to have that much by November 7, a few months before the famed football match.

They have a ways to go, but that has not diminished Hiler's enthusiasm. "We're going rogue with it," he jokes. "The idea would be to have millions of Kentuckians invested in this project. This is about shedding light to the world that Kentucky is awesome and it kicks ass."

Kentucky, like other states facing fiscal pressures, could use the tourism boost, too.

We'll be tracking this project, and if you feel like getting a T-shirt in exchange for a few greenbacks to the Kentucky cause - and another possible proof of Kickstarter's successful crowdfunding concept - you can head on over.

It's as simple as that, really. The best answer to the question, wins a MacBook Air. Note that you need to post here, but all you need is a Disqus account to participate. You might also want to read the rules before entering, but they're short and sweet.

We know that quite a few ReadWriteCloud readers are tackling big data projects, so we want to know what you've learned. Share your best tips about using virtualization with big data, and we'll be all ears.

Don't wait too long, though. This is the first of two contest in September, so you need to comment by the 15th to get a shot at winning. We'll announce the winner shortly after September 15th, and we'll be announcing the winner of the final August contest shortly. As always, we're looking forward to your responses!

Chad Fulton responded, that the most important thing when managing hundreds of virtual machines is managing people." Actually, he had a bit more to say, but he nailed it. If you're not Fulton, don't worry – you still have two days to enter your comment.

The question you have until August 31st to answer? What are your top 3 features when considering virtualization solutions, and why? Our judge for this contest will be Erica Brescia, CEO of BitRock. You'll need a Disqus account to participate, and rules can be found here.

We'd also like to thank Bryan Doerr, our judge for the first August contest. Doerr, has served as the CTO of Savvis, a division of CenturyLink, since 2003. Savvis, based in Town & Country Mo, is a leading provider of cloud-computing, hosting and network services.

Keep the comments coming, and we'll be back soon with a new winner!

That's the question for our latest ReadWriteWeb Cloud contest to win a MacBook Air. The best comment on this post wins. You'll need a Disqus account to participate, and rules can be found here.

We know that ReadWriteWeb Cloud readers have been tackling virtualization projects for years, so we're keen to know what kinds of features you're focusing on – and why. Let us know the three most important virtualization features for your workplace, and you just might be posting your next comment using a brand-new MacBook Air!

To win, you need to comment by August 31. Erica Brescia, CEO of BitRock, will be helping us judge the entries this time around and we'll announce the winner shortly after August 31st. We're looking forward to your responses!

The deadline is the end of October and there are already several hundred people hard at work. There are prizes in five different categories such as Biomimetic Design, Climate Change, Fuel Cells, Polymers and Big Data Analysis. Middle school Hadoop developers? It could be an emerging trend: now they just aren't all about using Facebook, but designing the next data interfaces for it.

InnoCentive has lots of other crowdsourced projects and problem solving challenges on their site than the PopSci challenge, it is worth checking out if you haven't heard of them before or read our article from several years ago here.

This is the week for contests. Over on our ReadWriteHack site we mention a contest being run by the US Defense Department for wannabe computer forensic examiners. And over on our Enterprise site, we wrote last week about how Intuit paid out a series of prizes for QuickBooks and Quicken App developers .

We'll review the comments and pick a winner at the middle of the month, because this month we are running two, that's right, two contests and two chances to win a spanking new laptop. So don't delay, post away.

Our judge for this contest is Bryan Doerr, who has served as the CTO of Savvis, a division of CenturyLink, since 2003. Savvis, based in Town & Country Mo, is a leading provider of cloud-computing, hosting and network services. Prior to his work at Savvis, Bryan held several positions in management, software research and software development at Bridge Information Systems, Boeing and the Johns Hopkins APL.

Our winner in last month's contest was Mark Ekive, who gave some very thoughtful responses to our question on key data protection considerations.

But let's talk about our June contest, where we asked, "What are key considerations when looking at server infrastructure in cloud deployments?" We got some terrific responses, including these from our winner, jderekwilson, who said, "three categories: Translation, Transition, and Transformation. If you're just starting out and have the luxury of considerations absent of legacy, you can jump to the last step and start crying your tears of shear joy at the beauty of it all!"

Here are some gems from your thoughts. zubinwadia wrote that he wants to see "predictable and validated deployment. Virtual machine images are a great start, but I want the equivalent of 'Chef' combined with the collective intelligence of AWS' user community to curate the best packages and deployment scripts so that getting started is even easier."

Chad Fulton suggested: "The most important shift in considering server infrastructure for cloud deployments is in mindset rather than technology. Cloud providers are selling you computing as a resource, and so you should understand your cloud provider in the same way that you would a utility company or ISP."

Michael Abed gave some practical advice. "I would consider placing the database and log files on physically separate RAID groups. Also? placing log files on RAID-1+ rather than RAID-5."

Some other pithy advice came from jayroa, who said, "At its heart, the promise of server infrastructure ROI and business success is centered around the power and flexibility of your server infrastructure, including the productivity tools it allows you to bring to bear on your business needs.... Before investing, make sure that your solution is designed in a way that allows your employees to perform more revenue-producing tasks."

Don't forget about support, as Rob Cortez mentions in his comment. "The single reason I chose Rackspace over AWS and I'm very glad I did -- I need a number I can contact anytime and I need them ready and willing to help me out in an emergency... That's crucial. It's almost like having another person on your team."

Reader cas33 urges all to know and understand their existing physical resources that it takes to run their apps. "Too often customers make the switch to running their front-end systems in the cloud before taking into consideration what goes into making those systems run."

Finally, some words of wisdom from Tristan Grimaux, who says, "Make good solid bricks [that are] easy to manage, to move around and to replicate. ???You need a great alert and reporting system. Cloud is about resilience but having components failing silently will sink your boat. ... ??Don't go cheap. Cloud turns to vapor.?"

This month's contest theme is: Protecting Data as it Moves Between Private and Public Clouds?

The best comment on this post wins. You'll need a Disqus account to participate. The question raises all kinds of potential conversations, ranging from the type of server security to remote access and encryption considerations. So, let's hear it!

We'll review the comments and pick a winner at the end of the month. Independent analyst Dan Kusnetzky is our co-judge this month. Thanks to Tom Rafteryfor his help in the June contest.

The winner will be announced on the first of August. We're still waiting to hear back from the winner we selected for June. We'll announce soon!

Now, let's hear from you. We look forward to the conversation!

That's the question this month for our MacBook Air contest. Best comment on this post wins. You'll need a Disqus account to participate. The question raises all kinds of potential conversations, ranging from the type of server security to remote access and encryption considerations. So, let's hear it!

We'll review the comments and pick a winner at the end of the month. Independent analyst Dan Kusnetzky is our co-judge this month. Thanks to Tom Raftery for his help in the June contest.

The winner will be announced on the first of August. We're still waiting to hear back from the winner we selected for June. We'll announce soon!

Now, let's hear from you. We look forward to the conversation!