RIT ASA DataFest 2024

DataFest will be held in the Xerox Auditorium which is located in the James E. Gleason Hall in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering. 

Friday, March 22nd, 2024 
From 5:30 pm to 11:00pm

• 5:30-6:30pm
  • Registration (GLE 2580 - Xerox Auditorium)
  • Pick up the nondisclosure agreement form
  • Pick up your badges and T-shirts!
  • Dinner
• 6:30pm
  • Opening ceremony
  • Submission of nondisclosure form
  • Extra Team formation for non-assigned participants
• 6:50pm
  • Revelation of the dataset
  • Brief overview of overarching goal of contest
• 7:00pm 
  • Official start of DataFest@RIT 2024
  • Clear indication of all breakout rooms (Rooms with DataFest posters)
• 8:00pm
  • Starting Time of Declaration of chosen category to compete in
  • Tutorial 1 - Data Manipulation (Informal/short with pointers to videos)
• 9:00pm
  • Drinks and snacks will be available
  • Tutorial 2 - Modelling (Informal/short with pointers to videos)
• 10:00pm
  • Light entertainment (Outside the auditorium)
• 11:00pm
  • Closing of the festival venue

Saturday, March 23rd, 2024 (Main day of the event)
From 8:00 am to 11:00pm

• 8:00-9:30am
  • Breakfast
• 10:00am
  • Tutorial 3 - Tips for Practical Statistical Knowledge Discovery and Predictive Analysis by Dr Ernest Fokoue
• 11:30am-12:30pm
  • Lunch
• 1:00pm
  • Tutorial 4 - Tips for Efficient Coding and High Performance Computing. 
• 3:00pm
  • Tutorial 5 - Tips for Writing a compelling final report
• 5:30-6:30pm
  • Dinner
• 9:00pm
  • Due time for declaration of chosen category to compete in. 
• 11:00pm
  • Announcement of the Sunday presentation schedule
  • Closing of festival venue

Sunday, March 24th, 2024 (Final day)
8:00 am to 4:00pm

• 8:00-9:30am
  • Breakfast
• 10:30am
  • Opening of the submission portal on DataFest@RIT Google form.
• 11:00am
  • Deadline of submission of final report
  • Encouragement to complete all slides for 1:00pm presentation 
• 11:30am-12:30pm
  • Lunch 
• 1:00-2:20pm
  • Parallel sessions of presentations  
  • Best Insight 
    • GLE 2580 - Xerox Auditorium
  • Best Visualization
    • GLE 2149
  • Best Use of External Data
    • GLE 2159
• 3:00pm-4:00pm
  • Awards ceremonies with photos and videos!
  • 3:15-3:22pm
    • Presentation by Best Insight Gold
  • 3:22-3:29pm
    • Presentation by Best Visualization Gold
  • 3:29-3:36pm
    • Presentation by Best Use of External Data Gold
  • Interview of DataFesters (Photos and videos)
  • Closing remarks
• 4:00pm
  • Cleaning and closing of DataFest venue

DataFest Location

Main room: Xerox Auditorium
(located in the James E. Gleason Hall - Kate Gleason College of Engineering)

Additional Rooms: Classrooms near the Xerox Auditorium.

Supplies

• We recommend that every team member have a desktop or laptop available for use during the competition. You might find it helpful to have a mix of PCs and Macs since they have different strengths. We recommend that you make sure the software you will be using throughout the weekend is installed correctly and running on your computer before the competition. You will be working with a large dataset so make sure that you have the space for it on your drive.
• You might want to have some of your favorite statistical or computational reference books ready to be used if you have them, and bookmark the pages that you regularly use.

Large Data Advice

• The dataset you will be working with is quite large.  If you type a variable name to view it, it will take a while to display. Therefore, remember these R commands: head(), tail(), str(). 
• We strongly recommend you create a small data set that you can use to test things on. Then, if it works out, you can apply your procedure to the large dataset.  Some procedures can take a long time to run on large data sets, and so it will be good to know that your procedure works (because you tested it on a smaller data set) while you wait.  We recommend taking a random sample of rows from the original data set, but there might be other approaches you find useful. 

DataFest Rules

• Before downloading the dataset you must sign the non-disclosure agreement by agreeing to the terms of use and entering your name and email address. At the end of DataFest, delete all data from thumb drives, hard drives, etc. The data is sensitive. 
• Should members of your team drop out at the last minute, you might be asked to join another team that is also missing members. 
• At all times between 9 am-12midnight there will be a consultant present. These are faculty, grad students, or other professionals with field-specific knowledge on the dataset. They all have different areas of expertise. Feel free to ask anything. This is not an exam, but a competition. Do not expect the consultants to write code for you, do data management, etc. They are there to help point you in the right direction, but you're responsible for getting there on your own. The schedule of consultants will be made available at the beginning of the event. 

DataFest Judging

• Each team will have five minutes to present their findings to the judges. 
• At some point on Friday, you might want to set aside time to think about what you want the judges to know. The five-minute time limit will be strictly enforced. At least one member must be present for the presentation.
• Your report must be submitted to the designated Google drive by 11 AM Sunday. Allowed formats: PDF. If using a web-based tool like Google Docs, please export to PDF and send the PDF as your submission.
• Your slides should be ready by 1 PM Sunday on your own computer (Zoom links will be sent to you then), when the parallel presentations start. You don't need to submit you slides. 
• Awards will be given in three categories:
  • Best Insight
  • Best Visualization 
  • Best Use of External Data