The second annual DataFest at Ohio State. DataFest participants used over 10 million records of hotel searches from Expedia’s web sites to analyze how customers interact with Expedia on their path from search to selection to purchase. Over 2 GB of search data could be combined with over 5 million fields of data describing travel destinations in order to understand how customer segments differ in their search and travel behavior and, ultimately, to help Expedia differentiate between “lookers”—those browsing Expedia’s sites—and “bookers”—customers who ultimately make a hotel reservation.
Dates: Saturday, April 1st–Sunday, April 2nd, 2017
ASA DataFest 2017 Event Details Flyer: DataFest2017-flyer.pdf
DataFest in the news: The College of Arts and Sciences news article on DataFest 2017.
DataFest 2017 by the Numbers
- 111 students participated in DataFest 2017.
- DataFesters came from over 27 different undergraduate majors...
- ...and 5 different colleges.
- 32 teams completed the weekend-long challenge,
- analyzing over 2 GB of data
- and presenting their work to panels with a total of 10 judges made up of faculty and analytics leaders from business and industry.
- Over 50 mentors were on hand to work with DataFest participants.
- Mentors included OSU faculty, graduate students and alumni, and statistics and analytics professionals from 6 companies locally and nationally.
Winning Teams
Awards were given in four categories: Best Overall Analysis, Best Visualization, Best Use of Outside Data and Judges' Choice. The winning teams (and honorable mentions) are listed below (students' majors are given parenthetically).
Best Overall Analysis
Winning team name: Team America
- Ryan Cheng (Business and Economics)
- John Robbins (Finance)
- Mike Wyatt (Finance)
Honorable mention team name: Team Penseurs
- Ross Hashbarger (Data Analytics)
- Joe Kunesh (Data Analytics)
- Remi Lassiter (ISE)
- Cassie Theobald (Data Analytics)
Best Visualization
Winning team name: !
- Brett Bejcek (Data Analytics)
- Nicole Casey (Data Analytics)
- Brandon Muschlitz (Marketing)
- Cameron Priest (Business)
Honorable mention team name: Happy Chickens
- Shweta Ambwani (Data Analytics)
- Cornell Blake (Data Analytics)
- Andrew Klaus (Data Analytics)
- Amanda Kovalcheck (Data Analytics)
Best Use of Outside Data
Winning team name: Statistical Anomaly
- Kathleen Fillingim (French and EEDS [Environment, Economy, Development & Sustainability])
- Kathy Guo (CSE)
- Mae Hutchinson (Data Analytics)
- Mohamed Meziane-Tani (International Studies)
- James White (Atmospheric Science and Earth Science)
Honorable mention team name: Breaking Data
- Tianran Lu (Math)
- Xirui Mao (Communications)
- Yahan Zhang (Math)
Honorable mention team name: Designated Derivers
- Arin Carver (Visual Communication Design)
- Kenji Gerhardt (Data Analytics)
Judges' Choice
This year the Judges' Choice award was given for the Most Actionable Analysis.
Winning team name: Bayes II Men
- Amy Chiu (ISE)
- Nicol Drozdowicz (ISE)
- Alisa Noll (ISE)
- Derek Sasthav (ISE)
Honorable mention team name: The Data Brigade
- Christopher Antos (Actuarial Science)
- Ben Boughton (Data Analytics)
- Caroline Kinnen (Political Science and Communications)
- Haoran Wang (Data Analytics and CIS)
Sponsors
DataFest would not be possible without the support of sponsoring companies and organizations.
National Coordinating Organization:
The American Statistical Association
Brutus Sponsors
The P&G Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation
Sloopy Sponsors:
Ford Global Data Insight & Analytics
Translational Data Analytics @ Ohio State
DataFest Supporters:
ASA DataFest National Supporters
Local Coordinating Organizations
