Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

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1st Place Team “UvicPsu”: Shengxi Xu, Kehan Li, Kun Yao

                  Team “D”: Rahul Bhasin, Arka Basu and Arun Augustine

 

Prize: $2,000 CAD Entry awards to the MMA program*

 

2nd Place Team “Nova”: Chandler Qian, Benjamin Chen, Jimmy Jin, Stephanie Hosang                                                                                                                                                      

Prize: $1,000 CAD Entry awards to the MMA program*

 

3rd Place Team “Data Squirrel”: Evah Yeh and Kevin Chiang

 

Prize: $500 CAD Entry awards to the MMA program*

*Prizes are applicable for August 2019 entry and include application fee waiver (worth $175 CAD) per team member

 

An international datathon
 

Participants from around the world were given the opportunity to take part in the Rotman MMA Online Datathon, an event that allowed them to put their management and analytical skills to the test while experiencing what Rotman has to offer. The Datathon tested participants on important skills relevant in the world of analytics: technical proficiency, managerial awareness, and effective communication.

 

With over 100 participants–making up 38 teams–the Datathon brought together individuals and groups interested in management analytics from across Canada and internationally. This included participants from Brazil, China, India, Myanmar, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates.

 

Joining the event as individuals, winning Team “D” was able to successfully collaborate in order to take the top prize along with Team UvicPsu" who entered as a group. Congratulations to 2nd and 3rd place winners Team “Nova” and Team “Data Squirrel,” whose submissions were successful in demonstrating an effective solution to the case.  

 

Tackling the case

 

The event began on September 20, when all teams were given details to a case, data and the task to submit their solutions to the questions poised in a PowerPoint presentation. The Datathon lasted for a week, with submissions due on September 26 at 12:00 PM. This timeframe allowed everyone to have the time necessary to tackle the case and collaborate with their teams.

 

Participants particularly appreciated the teamwork element of the Datathon and how they were inspired by the collaboration with their peers. For some, it gave them a new analytical perspective in real-life case scenarios. 

 

Teams had a diverse set of tools at their disposal, allowing them to take advantage of programs available to MMA students from the Management Data Lab (MDL). This optional computing resource gave participants access to the Rotman Analytics Cluster (RAC), which includes Jupyter Lab (Python and R Notebook), RStudio Server, and SAS.

 

These programs were essential for tackling the data set in the case problem, which tasked teams to construct an effective pro-active retention strategy in a realistic managerial setting. The teams were asked to effectively communicate their solutions with data visualizations and persuasive managerial arguments.  Customer retention is a big area for analytics, and many of the MMA practicum projects are focused on this topic.

 

How was it judged?

 

The submissions were sent to a panel of expert judges, all of whom are integral to the MMA program. The judges included MMA Academic Director Dmitry Krass (Professor of Operations Management and Statistics), Brian Keng (Chief Data Scientist at Rubikloud Technologies and Data Science in Residence) and Jay Cao (Research Associate at the Rotman Data Management Lab).

 

The judges took into account several criteria when deliberating on who the winning teams would be. They analyzed the effectiveness of the proposed solution, the technical correctness and application of analytical tools, and the clarity and quality of the presentation.

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