IIT-M and NPTEL launch Data Science contest on IPL cricket matches

Indian Institute of Technology-Madras’s BS (Data Science and Applications) degree and National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) are launching a contest to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) models based on the Indian Premier League (IPL), which commenced on Friday.

Titled ‘Cricket and Coding,’ this Data Science contest invites data scientists and enthusiasts to analyze data for IPL cricket matches to develop efficient models using AI and ML techniques.

Anyone with elementary coding knowledge and an interest in data science can register and compete. Apart from the coding challenge, there is also an opportunity for non-coders. A non-competitive “Guess the score” event is open to all the non-programmers who want to participate without writing any code, the institute said.

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“We are excited to launch this contest, which brings together the worlds of sports and data science. With the growing popularity of IPL and data science, we believe this contest will provide data science learners with an opportunity to apply their analytics skills to an existing domain,” Prof. Andrew Thangaraj, IIT-M, said.

The participants will be provided with a data set consisting of various aspects of past IPL matches, such as player performance, team performance, and match results, among others. The objective of the contest is to use this data to generate predictions on Power Play scores made by teams for the upcoming IPL matches, the IIT-M added.

The contest will run throughout the IPL 2023 season. Participants will earn points based on the difference between the predicted and actual scores. At the end of the tournament, the top-performing participants will be awarded exciting prizes and recognition during the annual techno-cultural event of the BS program - Paradox ’23.