Truman Team Wins Major Award in DataFest Competition
(Pictured left to right) Dane Winterboer, Severin Hussey, Nathan Bresette and Evan AuBuchon attend the American Statistical Association DataFest.
DataFest is a nationwide competition for undergraduates with the goal of analyzing a big data set provided by a corporate or non-profit sponsor. It provides students with an opportunity to learn valuable skills that can help prepare them for the job market.
Truman participated in the ASA DataFest Mid-Mo competition, hosted by the University of Missouri-Columbia, and was represented by team “GIF” or .gif. Out of 20 teams from four universities, Truman’s team won the top award, best in show.
At the competition, students received a large dataset and were given less than 24 hours to create a video that tells a story from the data, complete with statistical analysis and interesting visualizations. Teams were asked to explore student success using data collected from online psychology textbooks and quiz tools. Students were given six tables of data, totaling more than two million rows of data across 100 total variables. The completed videos were reviewed by a panel of real-world experts who selected winners in several categories.
The team included: Evan AuBuchon, junior statistics major; Nathan Bresette, junior statistics major; Severin Hussey, sophomore statistics major; and Dane Winterboer, junior statistics major.
In addition to gift cards and other prizes, students were awarded student membership in the American Statistical Association.
