DataFest@MQ: a weekend data competition
What is ASA DataFest?
The American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest™ is a friendly festival of data in which teams of two to five undergraduate students work to attack a large, rich and complex dataset over three days.
The dataset is provided by an industry partner and is chosen to provide many avenues of discovery. This collaborative competition emphasises on the art of storytelling with data. It challenges students to find their own story that is meaningful to the data donor.
All Macquarie Undergraduate students from any degree can participate in the event. If you don’t have a team in mind, we are able to help you to find one.
DataFest™ aims to bring the spirit of hackathons to statistics. It creates an opportunity for students to gain experience on the end-to-end data science workflow that employers are looking for. Having worked on a data analysis problem at this scale helps students become good candidates for any position that involves analysis and critical thinking. It also provides a concrete example for students to demonstrate their experience with solving real-life data problems during employment interviews.
Students are assisted throughout the event by roving mentors that we invited from our alumni network, industry partners and faculty members. They are data analytics professionals from a variety of fields. This event would be a great networking opportunity between our students and industry partners.
After 48 hours of intense data wrangling, analysis, and presentation design, each team is allowed a few minutes and a couple of slides to impress a panel of judges. Prizes are given for a number of categories such as Best Insight and Best Visualisation.
Here’s what you can expect
You will spend a weekend (with catering 🍔 🥤 provided)
- 🖥 analysing data chosen by a real-life organisation
- 📈 presenting your findings to a panel of judges to win some awesome awards
- 🤝 networking with professional statisticians and data scientists
- 👩 💻 building skills to impress future employers.
- Upon completion, you’ll also be eligible for 20 GLP points (under the codes GLX18/19)! [To be confirmed for 2025.]
Important dates 2025 🚨
| Monday 17 March | EOI Opens |
| Sunday 6 April | EOI Closes |
| Thursday 17 April | Pre-DataFest Workshop (Optional) |
| Tuesday–Thursday 22-24 April | DataFest Main Event |
Please express your interest by completing one of the following EOI forms:
If you have any questions about this event, message 📨 Iris Jiang iris.jiang@mq.edu.au
Can I join if I am a postgraduate students @ Macquarie?
DataFest™ is an undergraduate student competition, but we are seeking R enthusiasts from our master cohorts to serve as helpers, mentoring and guiding the undergraduate students throughout the event.
Here are some essential criteria we are looking for in our helpers:
- 📊 Competent in data wrangling and visualisation in R with Tidyverse (being knowledgeable with Python is an added bonus).
- 📆 Happy to dedicate roughly a full day at the event (can be spread across 3 days of the event).
- ❤️ Passion for data analysis (hypothesis testing is optional in the challenge).
- 🧑💻👩💻 Working experience in data analytics/data science/statistics or equivalent role is preferred.
Benefit for helpers
- 👕 A DataFest T-shirt and some cool R hex-stickers!
- 🍔 The event will be fully catered!
- 🤝 There will be opportunity for you to network with some like-minded academics and data professionals.
- 🎖 A certificate of participation will be provided.
- 🤳 We strongly encourage you to pick up your certificate in person on the last day of the event so we can all celebrate the success of the participants and take some photos together.
How to get involved for DataFest 2025 as a helper?
Please express your interest by completing this EOI form before 6 April 2025!
Testimonial
“I got to practice a lot of key skills that employers look for in a candidate such as teamwork, complex problem solving, critical thinking and communication skills. I am really happy with the fact that we had access to some of the data scientists working in different industries who played a key role in helping us structure our ideas, in defining the problem and communicating its importance to the client.” Second year Information Technology and Actuarial Studies Student
“I have greatly benefited from the experience at DataFest, and I strongly encourage you to join this wonderful, fantastic, delightful, amazing, stupendous event.” Second year Actuarial Studies Student.
Acknowledgement
This event is supported by the Faculty of Science & Engineering (FSE) and the School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences.
Iris Jiang and Thomas Fung
Organisers of DataFest