Weekend data competition
The American Statistical Association DataFest™ is a friendly festival of data in which teams of two to five students work to attack a large, rich and complex dataset over three days.
The dataset is provided by an industry partner and is chosen to provide many avenues of discovery. This collaborative competition emphasises on the art of storytelling with data. It challenges students to find their own story that is meaningful to the data donor.
When: 21-23 April
Where: 14 Sir Christopher Ondaatje Avenue, 163 Active Learning Space.
All Macquarie Undergraduate students from any degree can participate in the event. If you don’t have a team in mind, we are able to help you to find one. Upon completion, you'll also be eligible for 20 GLP points (under the codes GLX18/19).
DataFest™ aims to bring the spirit of hackathons to statistics. It creates an opportunity for students to gain experience on the end-to-end data science workflow that employers are looking for. Having worked on a data analysis problem at this scale helps students become good candidates for any position that involves analysis and critical thinking. It also provides a concrete example for students to demonstrate their experience with solving real-life data problems during employment interviews.
The DataFest experience
In 2022, DataFest was held at Macquarie for the very first time with eight teams and 33 undergraduate students from various areas of study including statistical modelling, mathematics, data science, astronomy and astrophysics, business analytics, actuarial studies, computing, psychology and education participated.
2022 participants had the following comments about the event:
“I got to practice a lot of key skills that employers look for in a candidate such as teamwork, complex problem solving, critical thinking and communication skills. I am really happy with the fact that we had access to some of the data scientists working in different industries who played a key role in helping us structure our ideas, in defining the problem and communicating its importance to the client.” – Second year Information Technology and Actuarial Studies Student
“I have greatly benefited from the experience at DataFest, and I strongly encourage you to join this wonderful, fantastic, delightful, amazing, stupendous event." – Second year Actuarial Studies Student
Networking opportunities
Students are assisted throughout the event by roving mentors that we invited from our Alumni network, industry partners and faculty members. They are data analytics professionals from a variety of fields. This event would be a great networking opportunity between our students and industry partners.
The current list of roving mentors include:
- Dr Joshua Ching, Data Science Manger @ Janssen Australia and New Zealand
- Dr Kevin Wang, Senior Data Scientist @ Illumina
- Dr Earo Wang, Data Insights @ Canva
- Dr Fan Cheng, Research Statisticians @ the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR)
Highlights
After 48 hours of intense data wrangling, analysis, and presentation design, each team is allowed a few minutes and a couple of slides to impress a panel of judges. Prizes are given for a number of categories such as Best Insight and Best Visualisation.
You will spend a weekend (with catering provided):
- analysing data chosen by a real-life organisation
- presenting your findings to a panel of judges to win some awesome awards
- networking with professional statisticians and data scientists
- building skills to impress future employers.
This event is sponsored by the Faculty of Science & Engineering and the School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences.
Get involved
Please express your interest by completing one of the following EOI forms:
If you have any questions about this event, message Iris Jiang iris.jiang@mq.edu.au
We look forward to seeing you at the event!