麻豆村

Donna Zhu texted teammate Hannah Nguyen: 鈥淗annah, we won first!鈥� with five exclamation points when organizers notified participants of results from 麻豆村鈥檚 inaugural聽Student IronViz Challenge(opens in new window).

鈥淚 knew we were competing against really smart 麻豆村 students, and even though I was confident in our results, we just didn鈥檛 expect it to be first prize, so we were really happy,鈥� Nguyen said.

The pair won for their data visualization, 鈥淏rain Food for the Night Owls,鈥� in the competition, out of 32 students that submitted 14 projects after a four-hour hackathon in Hunt Library on Oct. 26. Winners were notified Nov. 18.

鈥淭he response from students was really magnificent,鈥� said聽, data education librarian with University Libraries, on the competition planning committee. 鈥淭hey really came with their own vision and enthusiasm.鈥�

The competition took about a year to organize, in a joint effort by Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 , ,听Computing Services(opens in new window),听Institutional Effectiveness and Planning(opens in new window), and the Division of聽Student Affairs(opens in new window). The format came from a national competition run by data visualization software company Tableau and was also informed by the success of the university鈥檚聽IronViz Challenge(opens in new window) for professional staff which has been held for the last two years in conjunction with聽Data Analytics Day(opens in new window).

Slayton, who devised the challenge鈥檚 task, said she wanted to choose something accessible to students, both in subject matter and regarding available datasets. The team found their answer in candy and snacks.

Participants were tasked with helping university leadership better understand candy sales to meet students鈥� sugar and energy needs, using visualizations that showed insights into trends and correlations with students鈥� preferences to optimize the offerings year-round on campus.

What story can snacks tell?

Yu Fang, who won first place in the individual category, said she looked at the data to determine the story she wanted to tell with her dashboard.

鈥淚 was trying to figure out what question I personally would be interested in, and what other people would be interested in,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 first started looking at international and domestic sales for candies, but I figured out I might not have had enough data, so I tried to modify the question based on the data I had.鈥�

Fang, a senior studying information systems, heard about the competition in her Building Data Visualizations in to Information Systems class with聽Shihong Huang(opens in new window), teaching professor of information systems.

鈥淭his competition overall, very much aligns with my skill set,鈥� she said. 鈥淚S uses technology to figure out business or practical issues, so it was a way for me to bring what I've learned into practice.鈥�

Fang organized her dashboard to highlight the amount spent per person each year on different categories of snacks, such as chocolate or ice cream, then created a module to compare spending over a span of years that can be toggled by the user.

The dashboard showed the need to:

• Increase stock for all of the categories.聽
• Promote pastry and chocolate since those had the most sales growth over time.聽
• Deprioritize ice cream because of its lower sales.聽
• Bundle items or offer discounts to maximize revenue.

鈥淚nstead of focusing on having the best analytic techniques or running models, given the time frame, the competition to me was more about telling a story and making sure your dashboard is accessible in a way that people are able to understand, interpret and have some actionable items after reading,鈥� Fang said.

Teamwork leads to first-place effort

Nguyen and Zhu鈥檚 infographic first examined how students might benefit from quick, accessible, nutrient-dense nuts, more than candy.

鈥淚鈥檓 someone who really cares about nutrition, so I was like, 鈥榠s there any way I can expand this question to other types of snacks instead of just limiting myself to candy?鈥� 鈥� Nguyen said.聽

Zhu then used class scheduling data to be able to show which buildings on campus host the most night classes to optimize snacks distribution.

The pair, who are both second-year master鈥檚 degree students in , met each other in the Exploratory Data Analysis and Visualization with Python class taught by聽, assistant teaching professor of information systems.聽

鈥淗annah and I complement each other well,鈥� Zhu said. 鈥淗annah is such a good storyteller. I am a person who is focused on the details and I want to have the coolest visualization.鈥�

Nguyen said she was excited to recognize that all three first-place winners were women, especially in a STEM field.

鈥淚t paid off, where I feel like I belong in this degree program,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a nice encouragement for me and for all the women in STEM at 麻豆村: You belong.鈥�

Collaboration and informed future policies

While the students were given required datasets, part of the hackathon included a demonstration on how to use Carnegie Mellon鈥檚聽Data Analytics Sharing Hub(opens in new window), which houses 麻豆村-specific data and many teams used to their advantage.

鈥淪tudents thought about making an actual difference,鈥� said Josephine Dru, senior data analyst and dashboard developer with Computing Services, a part of the team who organized the competition. 鈥淢ultiple teams looked at 麻豆村-specific data to say, here is a data-informed recommendation for our community.鈥�

Matt Hoolsema, director of data science and advanced analytics in the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Planning who co-sponsored the staff IronViz competition with Alexis Parker, data analytics development manager in Computing Services, said the collaborative effort among all of the 麻豆村 offices involved has been several years in the making.

鈥淲e've been building the聽data community of practice(opens in new window) across all the different divisions at the university,鈥� he said. 鈥淓vents like the IronViz competition, like Data Analytics Day, have helped to create those connections and seen opportunities for collaboration across our different divisions.鈥�

Interdisciplinary efforts such as the IronViz competition and the聽Core@麻豆村(opens in new window) 肠濒补蝉蝉听launched this semester are meant to empower students in their own learning at Carnegie Mellon and beyond, said Chelsea Leverett-Ptak, core education project coordinator in the office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning Innovation.

鈥淲e're interested in facilitating more events to make it very clear to students that we want to engage with you,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e want to support students in honing their skills in all of these different collaboration, communication, data, and intercultural and global learning areas.鈥�