Brilliant Challenges Optimization Problem Submission Contest Final Report

TL;DR

This paper reports on the first large-scale contest focused on submitting optimization problem definitions via crowdsourcing, highlighting its significance for open science and operational research.

Contribution

It introduces a novel contest format emphasizing problem submission over solutions, advancing open science and crowdsourcing in optimization research.

Findings

Successful engagement of diverse participants

Identification of high-quality optimization problems

Guidelines for future optimization problem contests

Abstract

This paper concludes the Brilliant Challenges contest. Participants had to design interesting optimization problems and publish them using the Optil.io platform. It was the first widely-advertised contest in the area of operational research where the objective was to submit the problem definition instead of the algorithmic solutions. Thus, it is a crucial contribution to Open Science and the application of crowdsourcing methodology to solve discrete optimization problems. The paper briefly describes submitted problems, presents the winners, and discusses the contest's achievements and shortcomings. Finally, we define guidelines supporting the organization of contests of similar type in the future.