Winning the Best Use of Visualization: My Experience at the American Statistical Association Datafest Competition
Last weekend, I participated in the American Statistical Association Datafest competition alongside my teammates Michael NduPrecious Ofili, Esther Alaka and Inioluwa Odukoya. They were all amazing teammates, by the way.
The competition was organized by my school Western Illinois University School of Accounting, Finance, Economics, & Decision Sciences (AFED) but we had to travel to another campus for this.
The competition started Friday evening when the dataset was unveiled, and we were given two days to make sense of the data and come up with insights and recommendations.
My team spent the entire night of Day 1 cleaning up the data, brainstorming, and trying to figure out what direction to take, what analysis to do, and what tools we would use.
It was mentally tasking and physically draining, so we were exhausted by the time we returned to our hotel.
On Day 2, we came back together and continued the analysis, writing codes, and working on our dashboards.
By the morning of Sunday, we had concluded the analysis and our dashboard was ready for presentation.
15 teams signed up for the competition, 6 were not able to conclude their work before the deadline and so they dropped out.
Only 9 teams presented and my team won for the best use of visualization.
Well done Precious, Ugo, Ini, and Esther. You guys made this happen!