The European Center for Nuclear Research (European Nuclear Research Center) has launched an online contest calling on stakeholders to recognize the Higgs bosoms among a large number of dataCERN).
The competition, which has been published in a known for this purpose site works as follows: participants are asked to process data from 800.000 particle collisions produced by a LHC Large Hadron Accelerator simulator.
The data can be divided into two categories: either as those in which the Higgs particle appears to be involved, or those that Higgs does not participate in. Each of the collisions is accompanied by 30 variables, such as the energy and direction of the particles that result from them.
Of the 800.000 conflicts, 250.000 have already been classified as "Higgs" or "non-Higgs" and based on this information, contestants are required to 'train' a computer program to distinguish the rest between the two categories.
Participants then upload their results to the website which evaluates them by compiling a ranking list. This machine learning competition is accompanied by cash prizes that in total exceed 10.000 euros and to date more than 1.100 teams have submitted participation.
The team that will finish first will also be invited to the CERN research center to discuss with the scientists about its solution and to check if it could be adapted to real research needs.
Machine learning is playing an increasingly important role in modern research, and specific methods seemed very useful for discovering the 2012 particle. Its basic feature is the "training" of a computer program on the basis of a set of data, so that it can then separate itself from what to do.
"People love this kind of problem, they capture their imagination," said Joyce Noah-Vankee, an analyst of the website contest organizer. "However, we are trying to be the online data analysis house."
The contest has so far attracted a heterogeneous mix of people of different skills, as among the first to date there are people who have no professional relationship with physics. He will receive entries until the end of September.
