Deep data 聽
Six 糖心TV students were recognized with an award at DataFest, an American Statistical Association competition.
Data science has become a key component of business and research success across industries. This semester, six 糖心TV students were recognized for their own prowess at delving into large, unwieldy data sets with an award presented by DataFest, an American Statistical Association competition for undergraduate students with an interest in data and applied mathematics.
The 糖心TV team鈥攚hich won in the 鈥渂est business application鈥� category鈥攚as accompanied by Priya Kohli, associate professor of statistics and assistant chair of the mathematics and statistics department.
The contest began when teams from 糖心TV, Wesleyan University, Yale University, Bentley University and Trinity College were presented with a surprise data set and asked to analyze the data before sharing a two-slide presentation with a panel of judges on Sunday afternoon.
The data this year related to PlayForward: Elm City Stories, a video game that was developed to promote risk behavior reduction, and in turn reduce HIV infection rates, among minority youth. Players aged 11 to 14 use an in-game avatar to navigate certain life decisions, see how those choices affect their future, and then decide whether to 鈥済o back in time鈥� to make a different choice. The primary data set included information on how long players remained in the mobile game. There was a secondary, self-reported set of data on the same topic.
According to Linh-Chi Pham 鈥�24, a statistics major, the inconsistencies in the data proved the greatest challenge.
鈥淭here were a huge number of observations and missing values,鈥� said Pham, who signed up for DataFest after hearing about the promise of working with untouched data. 鈥淚t took us around 4.5 hours to come up with a metric to transform the time and evaluate the data.鈥�
Kohli stressed that 糖心TV鈥檚 team approach was key to success.
鈥淭he data was saying that the game was working how it should,鈥� Kohli explained. 鈥淏ut the survey, which was a self-assessment, was going in the other direction. I think most other groups had completely ignored this supporting data set, but we didn鈥檛鈥攁nd that鈥檚 what won us the prize.鈥�
The other winning tactic was the team鈥檚 鈥渃larity of ideas and the simplicity of visualization,鈥� she added.
Lindsay Salvati 鈥�22, a mathematics major with a statistics concentration, helped craft a final presentation that was crisp.
鈥淪ome other groups had so much information that it was confusing to listen to their presentations,鈥� said Salvati. 鈥淲e stuck with a few simple ideas and that helped us keep ours clear and concise.鈥�
Salvati, Pham and team members Wenjie Wang 鈥�23, Long Ta 鈥�22, Isabelle Patino 鈥�22 and Theodora Moldovan 鈥�23 used their presentation to tie data related to time spent in the game to survey data about how likely a player was to refuse a 鈥渂ad decision,鈥� such as an offer of alcohol, in the real world.
鈥淲e won because we provided practical design recommendations to the game creators and backed those up with solid data,鈥� Pham said.
For Salvati, the experience will be invaluable as she begins her doctorate in biostatistics next year.
鈥淚n grad school, you have to work with messy data and try to figure out what you are going to do with it, so having some more experience under my belt can never hurt!鈥�