Datapalooza draws students from several majors, universities

Apr 10, 2019      By Victoria Grdina

CSE students Annie Hua and Alec Schneider at the Datapalooza competition.
CSE students Annie Hua and Alec Schneider at the Datapalooza competition.

The annual Datapalooza event hosted by the Holland Computing Center and the Quantitative Life Science Initiative (QLSI) was held March 29 in the Nebraska Union. Graduate and undergraduate students from across Nebraska gathered in the City Campus Union to participate in the event that awarded more than $2700 in prizes. 


Datapalooza is a data analytics competition open to undergraduate and graduate students. Teams of up to five students were given a week to compile and analyze data to solve a data-driven problem. Teams then presented their work to a panel of judges and competed for cash prizes. The top three projects earned awards for Best in Show, Best Visualization, and Best Use of External Data.  

This year’s sponsors were Mutual of Omaha and Midwest Big Data Hub. Each team was asked to predict whole life insurance scores for zip codes across the U.S. About 51 participating students formed sixteen teams from several Nebraska universities, including UNL, UNO, UNK, and Creighton. The event was open to all students and attracted students from a wide variety of majors, including computer science, physics, mathematics, actuarial science, agriculture, and business.

“The goal of Datapalooza was just to give students a chance to practice these data analytics skills and get a taste of what data science is,” said outreach and training specialist Carrie Brown, who emceed the event and served as one of its judges.

This is the first year Datapalooza has been hosted in its new format. Previously, the event was set up as a day-long hackathon and was exclusive to undergraduates. This time, students had a whole week to develop a full solution with their team members as well as a coach.

“Previously it was more of just a data-dive, but this time they had to consider the problem and formulate what went into the solution,” Brown said. “This allowed students a little more time with the data, and with coaches, more mentorship.”

Brown says if HCC is able to co-host the event again next year, she plans to repeat the same format, and hopes to open the event up to more students outside of Nebraska.

“I think it was a great success. We had a very high level of participation,” Brown said. “I was so excited by the quality of the results that everybody presented. Regardless of their education level, their presentations were extremely impressive.” 

More details at: https://hcc.unl.edu/datapalooza-2019