The American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFestTM is a celebration of data in which teams of undergraduate students work around the clock to find and share meaning in a large, rich, and complex data set.  Essentially a “hackathon” for data analytics! The event first began at UCLA in 2011 and has grown into an event that is hosted by several of the most prestigious colleges and universities around the United States.

Students work in teams of two to five to analyze a surprise data set. Past examples of projects include analyzing arrest data from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), delving into lending data from Kiva.org, examining advertising success for the car website Edmunds.com, exploring dating data provided by eHarmony, travel data from Expedia.com, and data by the job search engine Indeed.com. This year’s data set will be revealed at the opening kickoff of the DataFest@CWRU event.

After two days of intense data wrangling, analysis, and presentation design, each team gives a brief (5 minute) presentation and no more than two slides to impress a panel of judges comprised of faculty and data analytics professionals from a variety of fields. Prizes are given for Best in Show, Best Visualization, and Best Use of External Data.

Who can participate?
All undergraduate students from the whole CWRU community are encouraged to participate.  Due to limited space, if more than 40 students sign up, preference will be given to seniors.  We expect to offer this event every year so more junior students will have later opportunities to participate.