The American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFestTM began at UCLA in 2011 when 30 students gathered for 48 intense hours to help fight crime through an analysis of every arrest record of the last five years as provided by Lt. Thomas Zak of the Los Angeles Police Department. DataFest is now sponsored by the ASA and is hosted by several of the most prestigious colleges and universities around the country and involves over 500 students. Over the years, teams came from UCLA, Pomona College, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, UC Riverside, University of Southern California, and Cal State Long Beach. The 2020, the 10th edition of DataFest, happened at UCLA on 5/1/2020 through 5/15/2020.
For the annual UCLA DataFest, student worked hard with data pertaining to the monumental challenge we are all facing: COVID-19.
This year’s virtual version of ASA DataFest at UCLA brought forth unforeseen challenges and wonderful opportunities. This beloved tradition is generally a competition wherein groups of three to five students have just 48 hours to make sense of a huge data set and present their findings in five minutes, using just two slides. This year, the two-week virtual version invited student groups to tell us a story about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world other than its effect on direct health outcomes. This virtual format allowed more students to participate than ever before.
After much deliberation, the judges recently announced the winning teams in the following categories: Best Insight, Most Creative, and Best Visualization. You can watch the winning presentations HERE. Additionally, you can peruse all of the groups’ presentations to see the many ways that COVID-19 has affected our lives in quantifiable ways. You can see all of the students’ five-minute presentations HERE.
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