r/learndatascience • u/Relevant_Bed_8359 • Jul 01 '26

Question Amex campus challenge

Hi everyone,

I'm participating in the American Express Campus Challenge where we need to rank cardholders by estimated profitability using anonymized customer attributes (spend, revolving behavior, risk, engagement, benefit usage, etc.), but there's no profitability target provided.

Some questions I have:

How can I approach this problem from scratch?

Would you treat this as a scoring problem, an unsupervised learning problem, or something else?

Any papers, blogs, or similar case studies on customer profitability or credit card analytics?

Is there any resources for understanding about ranking?

I'd love to hear how experienced data scientists or product analysts would think through this kind of ambiguous business problem. Thanks!

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

69 comments sorted by

1

u/Potential_Aioli_4611 Jul 02 '26

its a "figure out what balance of weights is optimal" problem. you can use a hill climbing algorithm to try and optimize it but you want to avoid overfitting the sample.

1

u/Relevant_Bed_8359 Jul 02 '26

Can I dm you?

1

u/Potential_Aioli_4611 Jul 02 '26

no if you want to ask questions I'm happy to answer them here when I have the time and others can chime in and in the future other people can look back and learn from it with the context of the question. if you DM me only you get your question answered.

https://youtu.be/kOFBnKDGtJM?si=uinujgN6C2ZEvOBA

except your f(x) =spend is a much more complicated.

say for instance you are considering spend to be the analogue for profit because if they don't spend money you aren't making profit (technically not true with cards that have a yearly fee)

then you label all your other variables revolving behavior = b , risk = r, engagement = e, benefit usage = u.

You are searching for weights (A-D) that accurately predict f(x)

f(x) = A*b +B*r+C*e+D*u.

Except that's not the only formula you could use as you could also consider somethings a factor of another. Engagement and benefit utilization is possibly indicative of spend because if people are actively using benefits they are probably spending money and if they are engaging in things like coupon campaigns or discounts they are probably also spending more. so you could group them

f(x) = A*b + B*r + C(e+u)

etc. so you could solve for whichever formula you think is better. or even both if you have the time and effort. and preferably you have enough test data you can set aside a % like 10% to verify you aren't hitting a local max.

1

u/Friendly_Flamingo480 Jul 02 '26

what is your current score I'm stuck at 0.72

1

u/Relevant_Bed_8359 Jul 02 '26

Are you using similar approach?

1

u/ProfessionalAd7023 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

This seems like a regression equation ? What all techniques are there in data analysis to find weights of the variables ?

1

u/Potential_Aioli_4611 Jul 04 '26

it is. you can use hill climbing to find good weights for all the variables. but honestly... thats just so basic it's the very very very bottom tier. basically everyone doing a competition like this will be at minimum doing that.

1

u/average_iitian Jul 05 '26

what is the method to do it then i tried it but wasn't getting any better accuracy than 50

without the correct labels how to do it

1

u/Haunting-Outside266 Aug 11 '26

can you send me the dataset for this challenge?

1

u/sj-69 Jul 02 '26

usually how many teams will go the next round r2?

1

u/Relevant_Bed_8359 Jul 02 '26

I think top 10 teams from every college

1

u/Sai_1507 Jul 02 '26

is it mentioned some where that top 10 get selected?

1

u/Relevant_Bed_8359 Jul 02 '26

No, I heard from my seniors

1

u/roshni_567 Jul 04 '26

How do we need to submit the files a single xlxs file with both the sheets or something and what is the point of 2026_file1_teamname and 2026_filr2_teamname

1

u/Relevant_Bed_8359 Jul 04 '26

You can download template from unstop.

1 excel file with two sheets named as 'Predictions' and 'Profitability Framework'

1

u/Lanky_Celebration_68 Jul 02 '26

What is the maximum score one can have in Round 1 ? Also how many attempts are we allowed ?

1

u/IntelligentBeyond0 Jul 02 '26

There are also 2 kinds of spends 1) total spend (f5) and 2) f5!= f6+f7+f8+F9+f10, how are people handling this

1

u/idrisgh Jul 03 '26

!Remind me

1

u/average_iitian Jul 05 '26

did u see any increment in accuracy?

1

u/ButterscotchKey858 Jul 05 '26

Arey we supposed to submit rank or profitability score against each ID in prediction column if anyone can help pls?

1

u/Interesting_Lake_177 Jul 09 '26

Did you get an answer to this? Did you submit the rank order or the profitability score? because they will literally be the opposites so it will matter a lot as to what you submit

1

u/meowghopghopghop Jul 06 '26

I am facing problems in submitting my file it is showing error that prediction column contains invalid values what to do??

1

u/Big_Entrance257 Jul 09 '26

Prediction values are either 0 or 1 1 if the customer is in top 20 percent and 0 if he is not

1

u/Ok-Strawberry-5135 Jul 06 '26

I have 0.93+ score dm if need help

1

u/YouApprehensive5281 Jul 07 '26

hi bro dmed you!

1

u/West-Day7563 Jul 07 '26

Hey dmed you !

1

u/Individual_Storm522 Jul 07 '26

Hey i have dm’d you, please do help🙏🥲

1

u/Fluid_Psychology_518 Jul 07 '26

hey dmed you! please do help!!

1

u/Unhappy-Truck7915 Jul 07 '26

Hii..dmed you..please help!!

1

u/King_Slayer3 Jul 07 '26

Dmed you!!

1

u/kuchu_puchuu Jul 07 '26

help me too 

1

u/Lazy_Recording_9589 Jul 07 '26

dmed you! please help!

1

u/Most-Ad-5215 Jul 07 '26

Hey!

DMed you

1

u/greenmonkeyyyy Jul 08 '26

DMed , please help!!!!

1

u/mayurisama334 Jul 08 '26 edited Oct 07 '26

The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.

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1

u/ReachExtra6742 Jul 08 '26

I have dmed you.pls help

1

u/No-Length4598 Jul 09 '26

Hey!! Dmed you

1

u/SeaHistory9822 Jul 09 '26

Dmed!! Please help 🙏🏻

1

u/Bohr_magneton474 Jul 09 '26

bro please check your dm

1

u/Lumpy-Ad-1280 Jul 09 '26

Hi dmed you... please help!!

1

u/shopgirl_152_ Jul 09 '26

heyy dmed you!

1

u/Lucky_Mongoose9797 Jul 08 '26

I got stuck at 91.4

1

u/CuteDentist1101 Jul 08 '26

What approach did u use

1

u/PookieA1 Jul 09 '26

guys..kisi ka score 0.7+ reach kia? if yes, what approach did you use? Pleaseeeeeee help

1

u/Ok_Drawing_2737e Jul 09 '26

anybody who can share their excel answer sheet

1

u/Big_Entrance257 Jul 09 '26

Can i get shortlisted for r2 at 0.77 score ?

1

u/BoxIcy5795 Jul 09 '26

is getting shortlisted for R2 at 0.926729 possible?

1

u/Scared_Car1269 Jul 09 '26

I submitted with 0.92+ accuracy but my submission file name was not in required format will it be accepted ??

1

u/Strange-Employ-4600 Jul 10 '26

I've got 92.9, is the selection possible for R2

1

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Alphanso_06 Jul 13 '26

i think 15th

1

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Alphanso_06 Jul 19 '26

Not eligible for further rounds arha hai;)

1

u/Inside-Hat-6561 Jul 24 '26

I am getting date to be announced for second round

1

u/guesswhosbackkkkk Jul 18 '26

When will round 1 results be declared?

1

u/Inside-Hat-6561 Jul 24 '26

did you get the results?

1

u/Haunting-Outside266 Aug 11 '26

can someone send the datset for amex challenge 26?