Can You Outsmart Your Friends?

CAMBRIDGE, MA – As of 2014 Google had indexed 200 Terabytes of the Internet, which most analysts posit is a mere .004 percent of the whole. And that’s just the Internet! Data is everywhere. In fact, “the average household creates enough data to fill 65 iPhones (32gb) per year. In 2020, this will grow to 318 iPhones,” according to an EMC Digital Universe Study.

With all of this data, how do you determine what’s actually useful? From ascertaining the fastest route for emergency response personnel to the scene of an incident, to spotting investment fraud, or identifying social media trolling the ability to make the most informed decisions exist, but it only exists if you’re looking at the right data set the correct way.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Draper launched an interactive gaming experiment as a step toward improving people’s ability to obtain actionable information from massive data sets.

This experiment is the perfect opportunity for players to show off their problem-solving skills. Anyone can volunteer to experiment with these cutting-edge applications and perform analytic tasks using real “big data” sets.

Draper seeks to build the most efficient and easy to use data analytic tools. The hosting of the massive online experiment “will help make open-source analysis products even more effective and user-friendly, and enable a future software that adaptively understands each user’s proficiency to provide the best results,” said Joshua Poore, Draper’s XDATA technical director. 

Interested players may test their analytical expertise on challenging missions by visiting xdataonline.com from a computer—these applications have too much raw power to be contained on smaller mobile devices. Volunteers may attempt a variety of scenarios like mapping, predicting, and characterizing population movements; determining whether profiles across social networks like Twitter and Instagram belong to the same user; and spotting types of investment fraud.

Compete against global participants and your friends today to climb the leader board to earn the title of the world’s best big data problem solver.