Data Acquisition

Questions related to preparing to attend an advanced competition. Experts will answer your questions and provide advice based on their first hand experience competing at advanced competitions. Talk to other students who will be attending and prepare together.

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alakais391
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Joined: Wed Apr 03, 2019 7:18 am
Occupation: Student

Data Acquisition

Post by alakais391 »

Hello,
For ISEF am I allowed to use historical data and analyze it? For example, can I look at databases published online and use them to train a machine learning algorithm, or am I restricted to data I collect myself?
MadelineB
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Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2014 4:42 pm
Occupation: Biostatistician/Data Scientist
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Re: Data Acquisition

Post by MadelineB »

Hello Alakais,

Here's a link to the rules for ISEF 2021:
https://www.societyforscience.org/isef/ ... nal-rules/

Here's two useful guidelines from the Science Buddies "Advanced Project Guide". Both of these guides emphasize that your ISEF project needs to be creative and original. So even if you find that the ISEF rules would allow you to use online data, you want to choose data so that your project is unique!

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ompetition

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... mpetitions

You can view over 1000 projects at the Virtual ISEF 2020 science fair through June 5. You can register for free at this link:
https://isef.6connex.com/event/virtual/login

Although ISEF 2020 was canceled for the in-person fair and there was no judging, this website showcases many of the projects. The Computational Biology category includes many projects which used machine learning. Viewing these might help you in selecting the focus of your own project.

Let us know if any of this helps and be sure to post again if you have more questions!
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