If you believe that action and practice are better than theory and have little to no experience in the field of machine learning and quantitative analysis (but a healthy interest), this might be the post for you, for the rest it is a look into a probable future where one more thing could become decentralized and open sourced: Wall Street. There are 2 main ideas at play here, so I'll try giving you a birds eye view of both: Numerai bridges both worlds and adds a crowdfunded twist by providing the raw data and asking you and me to provide a better estimate, these predictions are then used to control capital and the top performing ones get paid real money for their contribution, additionally there are incentives in the form of staking your own funds ( in the form of numerais own cryptocurrency) which in essence is a reward and punishment system for keeping your predictions novel and useful. This is a complex but interesting part which I will sidestep for now to focus on getting started. In my experience it will take a novice data scientist, coder, or hobbyist a few weeks to get off the ground, at the end of this very short period you will have practical knowledge on applying various statistical and A.I. concepts to a real problem on a platform that you can then expand to your own interests, the competitive aspect and financial incentives can help you stay focused and motivated while learning although I should mention that making a dollar might take months. If you are not planning on participating but came for the whole open source wall street thing you can skip the following 2 sections.