In this hackathon competition, teams of three to five students worked together to uncover meaning in a complex dataset through data analysis. They received guidance from industry sponsors, Scotiabank and Loblaws, and SAS faculty and graduate students. After two days, teams presented a brief summary of their findings to a panel of judges through a short video presentation and write-up.
While a 48-hour data hackathon may seem daunting, DataFest is open to students of varying skill and experience levels. 鈥淚t was my first time participating in such an activity,鈥 explained聽Pranav Atul Ratra, a 4B Physics and Astronomy student, 鈥渁nd I felt that I learned several useful skills that I can apply in my future endeavours, both academic and professional.鈥
This year鈥檚 DataFest was held virtually and organized through Microsoft Teams. The dataset given to teams contained health-based information from the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety Center. Participants were challenged to help discover and identify patterns of drug use within the data, with particular attention paid to identifying misuse.
At the end of the competition, winning teams were chosen according to three categories, with a$500 prize awarded to each student.
:
Ahnaf
Ryan,
Ankur
Phadke,
Shriram
Holla
:
Hanna
Nguyen,
Jennifer
Hu,
Jenny
Li,
Jihan
Feng,
Yue
Weng
:
Harleen
Bhandal,
Pranav
Atul
Ratra,
Romina
Hashemi,
Sara
Veerani,
Victoria
Blazevic
The varied award categories reflect the diverse thinking processes of these participants and the open-ended nature of DataFest that inspires innovation. Sara Veerani, a 3B Financial Analysis and Risk Management student said, 鈥淭he DataFest provided an incredible learning opportunity that fostered teamwork. Each team member brought forward their diverse classroom and聽workplace learning, along with the zeal to learn more.鈥 Ratra added, 鈥淲e each had different sets of skills, different views and ideas about how to tackle the problem and how to display our findings in a compelling way.鈥
Consultant assistance was considered a key component of the experience for the DataFest winners. 鈥淭he consultants of the competition, from faculty/grad students to industry professionals, helped further develop my data science and data analysis skills and thinking,鈥 said Victoria Blazevic, a 3B Statistics student. 鈥淭hey taught me about different tools and聽technologies to analyze data and how best to present our findings.鈥 3B Statistics student Ahnaf Ryan also noted the invaluable contributions of mentors at DataFest to participating teams:聽鈥淸they] provided feedback on how to transform an idea to an actual working prototype, which was quite useful.鈥
To future DataFest participants, Blazevic鈥檚 advice is to 鈥渃ome into this competition with an open mind and desire to learn. Ask as many questions as you can and prepare to develop new skills!鈥 Keep an eye out for communications next year on ASA DataFest to take advantage of this unique experiential learning opportunity.
The University of 蓝莓视频鈥檚 2021 ASA DataFest was hosted by the American Statistical Association and 蓝莓视频鈥檚 Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science. Sponsors for the event included Scotiabank and Loblaw Data Insights and Analytics.