ANU through the Research School of Finance, Actuarial Studies and Statistics (virtually) ran its first ever DataFest competition from April 12- April 14. During the 48-hour friendly competition, seven teams consisting of a total of 26 participants wrangled with and analysed complex data sets on drug use and misuse based on surveys conducted by the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety Center in four different countries: Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, and United States. Three Statistics Faculty judged the submitted entries, leading to the following awards:
Best Insight: Team Death by Excel
- Isha Singhal, Kehan Zhao, Jenney Chen, Benedict Chin, Xinyi (Kayla) Li
Best Visualization: Team FSG
- Zixuan Tan, Xinxin Li, Jinghong Pan, Muyao Chen, Chenxin Zhang
Best Use of Outside Data: Team LF Analytics
- Sung Jae Lee, Matthew Fisher
We congratulate the winning teams and all the participants. The judges were impressed with the submissions.
The participants had the following to say about the event:
“First experience of handling a very huge data set, great teammates and great overall experience.” - First Year Statistics Major
“The topic is related to real-life problems and the organization is pretty good that I feel that even if we hold the DataFest remotely, we are closely linked with each other.” - Bachelor of Advanced Computing (R&D) (Hons) / Actuarial Studies
“Being able to apply coursework to real data and working with larger data sets.” - Bachelor of Science (Statistics Major, Computer Science Minor)