When newspapers have to correct a published article, they issue a correction that notes the errors in the prior version and how they have been corrected. Following this logic, this blog post explains a correction we have made to the prize winners blog.

At the close of the Challenge, one team (MDRC) mistakenly believed that the submission deadline, listed as 6pm UTC on Codalab, was 6pm Eastern Time. After the close of the Challenge at 2pm, they were unable to upload their submission. They emailed us very soon after the 2pm deadline indicating that they had misunderstood. Our Board of Advisors reviewed the case carefully and decided to accept this submission. We made this decision before we opened the holdout data.

When we actually evaluated the submissions with the holdout data, we downloaded all final submissions from Codalab and neglected to add the e-mailed MDRC submission to the set. The team noticed they were not on the final scores page and emailed us to ask. A week after opening the holdout set, we added their submission to the set, re-evaluated all scores, and discovered that this team had achieved the best score in eviction and job training, two prizes we had already awarded to other teams.

In consultation with our Board of Advisors, we decided to do three things.

First, we updated the final prize winners to recognize MDRC.

Second, we recognized that this was an unusual situation. Other teams had rushed to the 2pm deadline and might have scored better with a few extra hours of work. For this reason, we decided to create a new category: special honorary prizes. If MDRC won for an outcome, the second-place team (i.e. the team that was in first place at the close of the Challenge at 2pm) would be awarded a special honorary prize.

Third, we updated the prize winners figure and score ranks to include MDRC along with all submissions previously included.

All prize winners (final, progress, innovation, foundational, and special honorary) are invited to an all-expense-paid trip to Princeton University to present their findings at the scientific workshop.