Inquiry about PhysioNet Challenge - Wild Card Entry

[Lakshmi Venkatesh Rasineni]

Dear PhysioNet Challenge Team,

We are a team of graduate students who recently found out about the PhysioNet Challenge and have been working on a solution for the Challenge. We believe that our approach shows promise, but we encountered some unexpected difficulties during the unscored phase. Given the short time frame, we are concerned that we may not be able to provide an acceptable code by the unscored submission deadline.

We understand that the rules allow for a "wild card entry," but the limitations of this entry were not clearly defined. We would appreciate it if you could provide more information about this option, including the specific criteria that would be used to evaluate such an entry.

We are eager to participate in the Challenge and contribute to the advancement of the field, and we hope that this option would allow us to do so. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and appreciate your understanding.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Lakshmi Venkatesh Rasineni on behalf of the graduate student team.

[PhysioNet Challenge]

Dear Lakshmi,

We expect for the approaches to be unfinished at this stage of the Challenge. If you have a promising approach with some unexpected difficulties, then you are like many other teams right now.

Both the Challenge teams and the Challenge organizers use the unofficial phase to “beta test” the Challenge before the official phase. We do not expect the teams to have high scores or to know what their final approaches will be. We do expect teams to be able to submit working code that tries some (maybe only a couple) of their initial ideas and to be able to clearly describe what they tried during the unofficial phase and plan to try during the official phase, both of which help us to improve the Challenge for the official phase.

The specific criteria for wild card entries are (1) to achieve the highest score out of all teams without an accepted abstract and (2) to write a well written abstract by the wild card entry deadline (see the webpage for guidance about how to write a strong abstract). We only accept one or two wild card entries each year because we need teams to participate in the unofficial phase to improve the Challenge for the official phase. For the best chance to be fully participate in the Challenge, it is better to try something during the unofficial phase and to improve on it during the official phase, even if this initial try is limited and imperfect, because it provides a starting point for your next steps.

(This is also a good approach for research in general.)

Best,
Matt
(On behalf of the Challenge team.)

Please post questions and comments in the forum. However, if your question reveals information about your entry, then please email info at physionetchallenge.org. We may post parts of our reply publicly if we feel that all Challengers should benefit from it. We will not answer emails about the Challenge to any other address. This email is maintained by a group. Please do not email us individually.