Students from Mason’s chapter of the American Statistical Association (ASA) won the Best Insight Award at the 2019 DC DataFest, a weekend-long data competition held from April 5 to April 7.
The event is designed to inspire undergraduate students with an interest in data science to participate in some real-life applications. They find new insights and useful applications from a single dataset.
Although some graduate students, faculty, and industry professionals are available throughout the weekend for assistance, the undergraduate students, representing the universities in the Washington area, do all the work themselves. After two days of intense data wrangling, analysis, and presentation design, each team is allowed no more than five minutes and two or three PowerPoint slides to impress a panel of judges.
Mason’s undergraduate team members included statistics major Eleanor Johnson, the president of Mason’s chapter of ASA; Anushka Pratavadhi, who is graduating this spring with a degree in computational and data science; and Marcus Williams, the treasurer of the ASA, who is pursuing a degree in government and international politics.
This year’s competition was sponsored by Summit Consulting, University of Maryland Alumni Association, the Joint Program in Survey Methodology, Google, Pew Research Center, American Association for Public Opinion Research, Mathematica Policy Research, and the Washington Statistical Society.