Students from Rice and elsewhere armed with laptops and sleeping bags flooded Duncan Hall on Jan. 24-25 for the second annual Rice Datathon sponsored by the Rice Data Science Club and the Data to Knowledge Lab (D2K). The 24-hour event asked students to choose from datasets related to a number of diverse topics, including a divorce prediction index, predicting the size of wildfires, determining the best locations to drill new wells and an investigation of cheating behaviors by the Houston Astros.
First place went to a team that studied a Rice course evaluation dataset and created an algorithm that outputs the five most helpful reviews. Members of the team, from left in the photo above, were Rice students Michael Sprintson, Andrew Feng, Timothy Goh, Colin King and Seung Hun Jang.
Second place went to a team analyzing Houston’s “food deserts” using data provided by the Kinder Institute Urban Data Platform. Team members were Rice students Angela Zhang, Megan Xiao, Adrienne Li and Thomas Yeum.
Third place was taken by a team analyzing the risks of coronavirus for various cities in the U.S. Team members were Rice students Daniyar Akizhanov and Austin Hushower.
See details on all 24 submissions at https://rice-datathon-2020.devpost.com/submissions.
Article by Mike Williams
Photos by Daniel Davis
