Data Science Contest Keeping It Fresh: Predict Restaurant Health Scores

Yelp is co-sponsoring a new Data Science Contest. Use Yelp reviews in Boston to predict whether a business will have a poor Health Inspection score.

Participate in this contest to help in an important social cause. Cities have limited budgets and currently send Health Inspectors to restaurants on an ad-hoc basis. Using the Machine Learnt models built via the contest, they would be able to assign Health Inspectors to restaurants more efficiently. Past models have shown high accuracy (82%) since Yelpers often talk about the same things that health inspectors look for – cleanliness, ambience, methods of preparation. The contest started yesterday and will finish on June 23, 2015. Winners will win cash prizes from a pool of $5,000.