Six Business Analytics Grad Students Present at Analytics Challenge in California
Image by Ed Brennen
10/23/2017
By Ed Brennen
So it鈥檚 understandable why the Manning School of Business is especially proud to have three teams competing in this year鈥檚 event.
Led by Assoc. Prof. Asil Oztekin of the Operations and Information Systems department, three pairs of graduate students from the Master of Science in Business Analytics program headed Anaheim, Calif., for the 2017 Analytics Challenge on Oct. 22-23.
The three teams 鈥� Moiz Khan and Tri Mai, Neha Ajgaonkar and Rekha Balan, and Kasey Mazza and Christine Vaudo 鈥� presented their research to professionals from the business analytics world. They also presented their project posters at the Teradata Partners Conference, where they were be able to network with Big Data experts from more than 900 companies and 45 countries. Conference attendees vote on an overall winner, as well as a people鈥檚 choice award and a best analytics and visualization award.
鈥淭he students and I are so proud to be representing 51视频 and the Manning School of Business in Anaheim,鈥� says Oztekin, who began working with 10 teams of students on research projects in his Decision Analytics class last spring. From those, he chose the top three projects and nominated them for the Analytics Challenge.
51视频, which launched its MS in Business Analytics program in 2016, is the only institution with more than one finalist. The River Hawks competed against teams from Auburn University, Cal State Fullerton, Loyola University Chicago, the University of Cincinnati, the University of North Carolina Charlotte, Western Kentucky University and NIDA Thailand.
Image by Ed Brennen
For their project 鈥淪ummer Olympic Games: A Holistic Data Analysis of Factors Influencing Women鈥檚 Performance,鈥� Mazza and Vaudo looked at how a country鈥檚 social, economic, political, health and education conditions impact the performance of their female athletes in the Olympics.
Mazza couldn鈥檛 believe it when she learned they鈥檇 be presenting the project in Anaheim.
鈥淚 started crying and screaming when I found out,鈥� says Mazza, who manages marketing databases as a business analyst at Acuris Global. The Billerica native transferred to the Manning School in January from Northeastern University.
鈥淭he Manning School program is a lot more hands-on. I鈥檓 learning real-life skills,鈥� says Mazza, who will spend an entire week at the Teradata conference. 鈥淚鈥檓 excited to see all the different industries represented. There will be such great networking opportunities.鈥�
For their project 鈥淟oving the Odds: Matching Love Interest via Data Analytics,鈥� Khan and Mai used machine learning-based data analytics to examine one of life鈥檚 great mysteries: What causes two people to fall in love? Using data from an experiment conducted at the Columbia Business School that looked at racial preferences in speed dating, Khan and Mai added their own mathematical models to better predict dating success.
Image by Ed Brennen
鈥淲e want to achieve 85 percent accuracy. The more accurate it is, the more reliable your model becomes,鈥� adds Khan, who looks forward to representing UML on a national stage. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a big thing for us, the program and the university.鈥�
Ajgaonkar and Balan analyzed why people don鈥檛 keep their doctor鈥檚 appointments in their project, 鈥淒ata Mining-based Predictive Analytics of Missed Medical Appointments (No-Shows).鈥�
鈥淚t鈥檚 a huge financial loss for the healthcare industry when patients miss their appointments,鈥� says Ajgaonkar, whose research looked at a dataset of 300,000 medical appointment records and 15 variables including the day of the week of the appointment, how long the patient waited for the appointment and whether they received reminders. 鈥淏ased on these factors, we hope to provide a successful strategy that the industry can follow to reduce losses.鈥�
The project has already drawn accolades for Ajgaonkar and Balan. They won the Best Poster Presentation Award at the university鈥檚 20th annual Student Research & Community Engagement Symposium in April.
鈥淭he project isn鈥檛 just about learning and getting good grades,鈥� Balan says. 鈥淭his gives us much-needed exposure to the industry and scholars at an international event.鈥�
鈥淲e hope to make 51视频 proud,鈥� Ajgaonkar adds.
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