Kaggle hosting $1M competition to improve lung cancer detection with machine learning

Kaggle, the nearly ten year old startup that hosts competitions for data science aficionados, is hosting a competition with a $1 million purse to improve the classification of potentially cancerous lesions in the lungs. The funds are being provided by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation as part of the 2017 Data Science Bowl, hosted by Booz Allen Hamilton and Kaggle. This isn't the first time that major prize money has been given away to accelerate research in targeted areas. The Data Science Bowl featured a competition last year to identify signs of heart failure with a $200,000 purse and the year before it tasked data scientists to assess ocean health. The $1 million going towards this year's competition will be the most ever given out as a prize on the site.