IIT Madras is conducting a cricket based competition for students and professionals and Data Science enthusiasts.

The contest called ‘Cricket Hackathon 2021’ is for anyone who have basic knowledge of cricket, Python language skills.

Participants in the contest by IIT Madras must analyse the data from previous matches and come up with a code to predict the scores after six overs in every innings for the upcoming T20 matches as a part of the contest.

What if one is a non-coder? A non competitive ‘Guess the score’ event is open to all the non-programmers who want to participate without writing any code.

Special event t-shirts are up for grabs for participants in this category.

Points to remember
Individuals can participate in the contest by IIT Madras as a single participant or as a team.

The participating team can have a maximum of four members.

This academic competition of IIT Madras has been designed for beginners to learn and and compete as well as professionals to demonstrate their capabilities.

Even those who are new to data science, but have the interest to learn can go through the resources available online and try participating by using simple mathematical models.

Participants (individuals or teams) with the lowest error in their prediction over 50 innings will be declared as the winner of the IIT Madras BSc Degree’s Cricket Hackathon 2021.

IIT Madras to conduct great cricket contest to promote Data Science

There is no registration fee for taking part in the contest by IIT Madras.

Registration
Candidates willing to take part can click the url ‘https://onlinedegree.iitm.ac.in/contest/’ to register.

The registrations begin from April 13.

Soon after the webpage downloads upon clicking the above url, participants can click the button ‘Register Now’ located below the banner to commence the registration.

More about the contest
All participants in the contest by IIT Madras will be provided with data from past T20 matches which can be used to train the code for the contest.

A sample input file (which the code has to accept and process) and some videos introducing basic data science concepts and introducing the data set will also be provided.

This competition is structured as an academic activity where participants will try to predict the score at the end of six overs in every innings for a set of matches.

Also read ‘Are you a student looking for a scholarship? Click here to know how to apply for Saksham Scholarship Exam 2021‘

The contest is expected to run for about 50 innings of the T20 matches.

For each innings of each match, the output of the code must be a single number, which is the score at the end of the 6th over.

Participants in the contest by IIT Madras can submit and change their code everyday which will be used for evaluation by IIT Madras BSc team to get the score prediction.

Instructions
Each participant (individual/team) in the competition by IIT Madras will submit the code and a writeup of the logic or algorithm used along with the score predicted by the code (when run on their local system prior to the match.

Teams can update and resubmit their code to improve their predictions at regular intervals during the contest.

The cut-off time for updated submissions is 2 pm for each match day.

The prizes
There are lot of exciting prizes for the winners in the competition by IIT Madras.

Top five individuals/teams of the contest by IIT Madras will get a cash prize of Rs.1 lakh each along with the Certificate of Appreciation.

Teams in positions 6 to 10 will get a cash prize of Rs 25,000 each along with the Certificate of Appreciation.

Teams in positions 11 to 50 will get a cash prize of 5,000 each along with the Certificate of Appreciation.

IIT Madras BSc programme T-shirts will be provided for unique winners getting into Leaderboard of the Day.

Decisions of the IIT Madras BSc team will be final in evaluating the codes and the winners.

Professor speaks

Professor Prathap Haridoss, Professor-in-charge, BSc Degree Program, IIT Madras said it is important to have skilled manpower in Data Science from India to meet the requirements of the global economy.

India will continue to have a competitive advantage if we are able to nurture and develop young talent in the area of Data Science, he said.

Professor Haridoss said this is purely an academically driven Innovative competition to inspire young students to explore the field of data science, its applications and aspire for a career in Data Science.

In 2020, IIT Madras launched the world’s first BSc in Programming and Data Science, aiming to eliminate barriers of age, discipline, and geographic locations, and giving access to world-class education to all from the comfort of one’s home.

Currently, 7000 students are already learning in the BSc programme and the application form to apply for the next batch is open. Visit ‘https://onlinedegree.iitm.ac.in’ for more details.

S. Vishnu Sharma

S Vishnu Sharmaa now works with collegechalo.com in the news team. His work involves writing articles related to the education... (Full bio)