The LA Bike Share Data Challenge
The Texas A&M Institute of Data Science (TAMIDS) recently awarded a total of $5,000 to five teams of graduate and undergraduate students for placing in its 2019 Data Science Competition.
Students were asked analyze data taken from more than 600,000 bicycle commuter trips made in Los Angeles and develop business solutions for LA Bike Share, a for-profit company in Los Angeles. The company is interested in using the data to project demand for its bicycles and to identify potential locations for new stations.
Contestants had one month to complete their analysis and submit a written report. From 11 entries, 7 finalists were selected to present their analyses to judges at an April 17 event held in the auditorium of the Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building on Texas A&M’s main campus.
“I was impressed by the high quality of entries in this year’s competition,” TAMIDS Director Nick Duffield said. “The winning team was particularly commended by the judges for their ingenuity in finding and using subsidiary data from LA Bike Share to identify new bike rental locations.”
Competition Judges and Sponsors
The competition was organized by Dr. Nick Duffield (TAMIDS Director and Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering) and Dr. Edward Jones (Executive Professor in the Department of Statistics) and coordinated by Jennifer South (Senior Administrative Coordinator at TAMIDS). The competition judges were Dr. Duffield and Dr. Jones along with Dr. Dilma Da Silva (Department Head of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M), Dr. Venkatesh Shankar (Coleman Chair in Marketing, and Director of Research at the Center for Retailing Studies at Mays Business School, Texas A&M), Shawn Turner (Senior Research Engineer at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute), and Dr. Charles Lindsey (Senior Statistician and Software Developer at StataCorp LLC).
The prizes for the event were sponsored by StataCorp LLC, TAMIDS, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Statistics at Texas A&M University.
The Prize Winners
In the graduate student category, first place went to Team Superficial Intelligence, with graduate student Sheelabhadra Dey and seniors Chinmay Phulse and Josiah Coad, all from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Engineering; and Brandon Walker, graduate student in both the Department of Statistics, College of Science and the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts. The team received $1,500.
Team Superficial Intelligence- $1,500.00 (1st Place Graduate Team)
Left – Right: Josiah Coad, Chinmay Phulse, Sheelabhadra Dey, Brandon Walker, TAMIDS Director Nick Duffield and Executive Professor Ed Jones
In the undergraduate student category, first place with a prize of $1,500 went to Team Datarmination, College of Science senior Isaac Ke and sophomores Pranika Madhavan and Michael Lee, all in the Department of Statistics, and sophomore Stephanie Sims, Department of Mathematics.
Team Datarmination – $1,500.00 (1st Place Undergraduate Team)
Second place in the graduate with a prize of $1,000 went to Team Ensemble, composed of four graduate students from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Engineering: Saksham Agrawal, Prakhar Bajpai, Gaurav Burman and Ayan Patel.
Team Ensemble – $1,000.00 (2nd Place Graduate Team)
Two teams tied for the third-place graduate prize of $500 each: Team Maverick, College of Engineering graduate students Divyank Garg, Shivam Raj Solanki, Shirish Pandagare, Drupad Kumar Khublani, Department of Industrial Engineering, and graduate student Sayeed Akhtar Alvi, Department of Engineering Systems Management, and Team Mean Squares, with graduate students Prabhneet Arora V, Department of Industrial Engineering, and Yogarshi Pradhan, Department of Petroleum Engineering, both in the College of Engineering; and graduate students Sarah Pettengill, Leanne Hinrichs and Veronique Marcotte, all in the Department of Statistics, College of Science.
Team Maverick – $500.00 (Tied for 3rd Graduate Team)
Team Mean Squares – $500.00 (Tied for 3rd Graduate Team)
Prabhneet Arora V; Veronique Marcotte; Sarah Pettengill; Leanne Hinrichs; Yogarshi Pradhan