Crowdsourced Coders Take On Immunology Big Data 31
ewenc writes "Mercenary computer coders are helping scientists cope with the deluge of data pouring out of research labs. A contest to write software to analyze immune-system genes garnered more than 100 entries, including many that vastly outperformed existing programs. The US$6,000 contest was launched by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School, both in Boston, Massachusetts. TopCoder.com, a community of more than 400,000 coders who compete in programming competitions, hosted the contest. The results are described in a letter published this week in Nature Biotechnology."
Genes as strings (Score:3)
With the help of employees at TopCoder.com, Guinan’s team created a contest that expressed the problem in generic, non-biological terms, such as strings and sub-strings instead of gene sequences and gene segments.
That's funny, because I can't remember that any other approach than a stringological one has ever been used.
Re: Genes as strings (Score:1)
Crowdsource Coding? (Score:2, Insightful)
Next up on Stack Overflow:
Can some1 pls post the codes for in generic, non-biological terms, such as strings and sub-strings instead of gene sequences and gene segments. full codes pls email me at topcodersplspostfullcodes@hotmail.com
What a fuckin' scam...FTFA
The US$6,000 contest was launched by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School, both in Boston, ....
Their contest ran for two weeks and awarded weekly $500 prizes to top performers.
In total, 122 people submitted computer programs to characterize the genes involved in immune responses. Half of the entrants were professional computer programmers, yet none worked as computational biologists. Contestants spent an average of 22 hours on the problem, accumulating a total of nearly 2,700 hours of development time.
Who do you want to bet owns the copyright?
How about open source instead of $6000 tossed at a starving pack of desperate coders to solve "Big Data" problems for them.
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spot on, its a freelancer site dressed up (Score:2)
as some kind of leet hacker haven. its full of the same horse shit you find all over those places
"need powerpoint conversion ASAP!"
"java lx2e zorbog buzzheavy lightyear lcick layer"
paywalled? (Score:2)
looks to be paywalled, @ $32 for a single article?
Re:paywalled? (Score:4, Informative)
try this
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/topcoders-open-community-challenge-process-yields-970-fold-increase-in-speed-for-big-data-genomics-sequencing-algorithm-190258111.html [prnewswire.com]
not much return (Score:5, Insightful)
It's too bad the winning entry, at 970x the speed of the algo it replaced, only received $6k. Surely this was worth a lot more to the eggheads than that? You'd have difficulty contracting even simple, low grade code for that amount?
Re:not much return? think again. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's too bad the winning entry, at 970x the speed of the algo it replaced, only received $6k. Surely this was worth a lot more to the eggheads than that? You'd have difficulty contracting even simple, low grade code for that amount?
I think you're overlooking the fact that a coder who wins the contest gets something far more valuable: a demonstrable proof of one's mettle and a fairly admirable accomplishment that can only pay dividends for years to come when they're hired by a company who pays them what they're really worth.
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true, but in the short-term, bragging rights and resume' bullet points don't pay the bills.
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If you're conquering the challenge for the short-term, you're doing it for all the wrong reasons.
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It's a matter of priorities. If you're lost in the wilderness, you work on obtaining (1) shelter, (2) water, and (3) food. in that order. It doesn't do you any good to have a good food and water supply if you freeze to death.
If you want a resume bullet or experience, that's what workstudy and unpaid apprenticeships are for. This was supposed to be offering financial reward. And I'm sure it also factored in the bullets, but I think they assigned the bullets too much value.
I think if I was on a big proje
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The whole premise of contests is a scam. Everyone works their ass off for some 'prize'. Only one wins yet the contest hosts get to benefit from all entries.
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That is why I only take part in contests, where my work is not usable in any production environment. Contests for the contest sake. Google CodeJam, Project Euler, ACM ICPC, you name it.
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when they're hired by a company who pays them what they're really worth.
Same kid of shit my old boss would say like "when our ship comes in". The bigger boss pulled him aside and told him not to say things about when the important people got rewarded, and that we didn't belong to that group. My job and yours is to weigh anchor and row vigorously while they water ski.
I got the last laugh, the company barely exists now, that ship was really a trap, our captain gave away the company jewels without verifiable data metrics.
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But what if the company supposed to hire this winner just starts a TopCoder Contest, too? This example shows quite clearly that there are people out there selling their souls for bragging rights. Why do you think, this will not be exploited? Remember: That contest yielded 2,684 hours of development time with an overwhelming result for just 6k USD, there is no way to get cheaper. You can brag, that's it. I think those competitions ruin the income of software developers in the long run. Not to mention that so
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You're trying to bring facts and logic into the narrative of "1337 h4x0rz are sooo much smarter than those hidebound academic 'scientists' with their fancy 'degrees' and expensive Big Science labs!" that we're all supposed to love so much. Stop that.
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The source codes of the winners are here:
http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/OpenSource/SequenceAlignment [topcoder.com]
Frankly, $6k is a lot of money for the amount of effort (less than 22 hours of work in average).
Open government (Score:2)
I've just finished reading the first few chapters of that book and i have to say it really blew my mind. I work in a quasi-IT role in a public sector health organisation; it's really amazing to me how difficult everyone makes it all out to be. Our IT systems are cobbled together from a range of hugely expensive 3rd party solutions - none of which inter-operate and all of wh
how lond have you worked there? (Score:3)
in the public sector, your dick is measured by how big your budget is. why the fuck would you want to spend LESS money than you did last year? then your budget gets cut - not only do you have to fire some people, you destroy any chance of advancing up the hierarchy. not only that, you dont have anyone to sue if the 'solution' is behind schedule or doesnt work or, in healthcare, kills someone (Therac 25 anyone?).
Also, you typically get kickbacks from vendors for 'implementing' their 'solution' after a 'caref
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Shitty prize (Score:1)
Working for free (Score:2)
Coders work for free? Looks like they've taken a tip from gaming companies, which do Q&A and product testing by outsourcing it to gamers who do it for free - or even pay for the privilege, as has been seen in various betas requiring payment.