The 2021 QUESTech Datathon, the first-ever data competition hosted by the QUESTech student organization, challenged students to gain more technical experience, regardless of skill level. The Datathon was held from February 14th to 20th and was sponsored by Fifth Tribe, a digital agency in DC. 

When I asked QUESTech co-leads Tania Arya (Cohort 33) and Amod Mathur (Cohort 33) what inspired them to plan the Datathon, they explained how they were originally planning to host a Hackathon during the spring semester last year. However, due to COVID, it was postponed to a later date. Fortunately, the event came together once Khuram Zaman, CEO of Fifth Tribe, reached out to QUEST with a dataset that he thought could be implemented into a Datathon challenge.  

Because the Datathon was open for all QUEST students to participate, regardless of major or prior experience, QUESTech offered workshops and relevant resources for students to prepare. The first workshop on February 4th, From Data to Visualizations, taught how to use Python to transform complex datasets into clear visualizations. The second workshop, Presenting Technical Findings, was on February 11th. In this workshop, Dr. Bailey and QUESTech reviewed how to effectively communicate code and other technical concepts to an audience. If interested, you can view the From Data to Visualizations slides here and the Presenting Technical Findings slides here. In addition to the workshops, a resources page was also offered, which covered relevant libraries, as well as Python and tweet analysis tutorials. 

The challenge itself was open-ended and allowed students to be creative in what key insights they could discover. Teams were provided with a dataset of Islamophobic tweets in CSV format and were prompted to discover trends that could help contribute to positive change. Suggested areas to analyze were: keywords, trending topics, language & sentiment, location, presence of bots, network analysis, and anything else of interest. 

After having the week to prepare, teams presented their deliverables on February 20th. Judges Dr. Bailey, Lydia Hu (Cohort 32), and Khuram Zaman scored presentations based on depth of analysis, quality of presentation, and originality. Prize money was provided to the top three teams with respective amounts of $500, $350, and $100. Shout out to the first place team Daniel Ben-Or, Asher Gilani, and Varun Singhai, all members of Cohort 33! 

When reflecting on the Datathon, Tania said that her favorite part was listening to the presentations because she went into them not knowing what to expect, yet was impressed with the deliverables teams were able to come up with. Amod explained that one of his favorite parts was working with Khuram Zaman from Fifth Tribe, who was very helpful throughout the planning. Additionally, Amod enjoyed seeing people who didn’t have much technical experience learn relevant skills throughout the Datathon and put together great presentations. 

The first-ever Datathon exemplified the multidisciplinary, hands-on experience that QUEST provides to students and QUESTech hopes to do more in the future. A huge thank you goes out to QUESTech, especially co-leads Tania and Amod, for their planning and execution of the Datathon!