Data Science Industry Day

Industry Day—a celebration of the first Data Science Competition, organized by the statistics department along with data scientists—was held virtually on April 28. Following introductions by Provost Jack Hu and Alan Dorsey, dean of Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, the top undergraduate and graduate data science teams presented their findings from the competition.

Industry Day included a panel discussion about careers in data science from brand executives before awarding the winning undergraduate team, led by Bryce Davis, and the winning graduate team, led by Jeevan Jankar, for their work.

“We can directly explain to the customer where they go wrong, what you can do better and how your past behavior influences current, automated decisions,” Davis said. “That’s how we won the competition.”

Both runner-up and winning teams at the undergraduate and graduate levels gave brief presentations on their project research processes during the competition.

Each team was tasked with developing a quantitative model for making credit card decisions. They received simulated datasets typical of performance of credit card accounts with credit history information.

Using that information, every team developed two models, one of which used traditional statistical methods and the other used a modern machine learning algorithm. The individual teams compared the results from both approaches, chose an appropriate method and used it to create an algorithm for making accept and decline decisions on credit card applications.

MORE from Columns' coverage of the event>