Hearst Challenge Update

We are entering the home stretch of the competition.  The last time I checked we had 700 teams registered. Also after a long time the leader board saw some movement at the top, with "alegro" from Ukraine taking the top spot. One of the most exciting things for me has been the rich diversity in the participants. Here is a recent breakup by country:

Country	Number of Participants
United States	309
India	66
Information not available	41
Canada	33
Australia	29
United Kingdom	27
Taiwan	17
China	11
Hungary	9
Spain	8
New Zealand	7
Brazil	6
France	5
Germany	5
Netherlands	5
Poland	5
Russian Federation	5
South Africa	5
Denmark	4
Israel	3
Mexico	3
Slovenia	3
Sweden	3
Austria	2
Chile	2
France, Metropolitan	2
Indonesia	2
Iran	2
South Korea	2
Turkey	2
United Arab Emirates	2
Afghanistan	1
American Samoa	1
Argentina	1
Bangladesh	1
Bosnia and Herzegovina	1
Bulgaria	1
Colombia	1
Ecuador	1
Egypt	1
Finland	1
Guatemala	1
Hong Kong	1
Japan	1
Kuwait	1
Luxembourg	1
Malaysia	1
Pakistan	1
Portugal	1
Romania	1
Singapore	1
Sri Lanka	1
Sudan	1
Switzerland	1
Uganda	1
Ukraine	1
Viet Nam	1
Grand Total	651

A total of 58 countries! Watch this space for more updates.

--Datamining_guy