South Dakota Mines
students on the winning data science team at this year’s MinneMUDAC competition
include math and computer science majors Jacob James and Colton Snyder, math
major Trevor Krason and computer science major Karissa Schipke. These students
are part of the data science club (referred to as the Data Miners) at Mines.
A team of South Dakota Mines mathematics and
computer science students captured top honors at the MinneMUDAC data science competition held at Target
Field in Minneapolis, Minn. Mines took home a second place honorable mention
and was one of three teams recognized among the 28 universities in the
undergraduate division.
Mines was among the smallest schools at the event,
but the institution has established a history of doing very well at this
competition with a number of top scoring teams and individuals during the last
five years. This year the Mines undergraduate team finished above other schools
like Syracuse, University of Wisconsin Madison and the University of Minnesota
College of Science and Engineering.
Each year the MinneMUDAC competition offers a new
challenge. This year, event organizers, MinneAnalytics, teamed up with the
Minnesota Twins to develop a program that could predict gate attendance for
home games during the 2023 season. Student teams were required to gain an
understanding of how various factors influence attendance at Major League
Baseball (MLB) games and then tasked to consider the Minnesota Twins and MLB as
their clients.
“Our students did a very, very good job at analyzing
the data and forecasting future MLB attendance,” says Kyle Caudle, Ph.D., a
professor of mathematics at Mines and one of the team’s advisors. “One of the
unique ideas the team came up with was to use an ensemble method (a way to
aggregate multiple models to provide a more accurate prediction), they were the
only team to consider this approach,” says Randy Hoover, Ph.D., a professor of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the other team advisor. Sherwyn
Braganza, a Ph.D. student in Data Science and Engineering at Mines, also
mentored the team this semester and helped guide some of the data
visualization.
A secondary prize will be awarded to the team with
the predictions that come closest to reality in the fall at the conclusion of
the baseball season. The winning team gets the chance to work with the
Minnesota Twins to have their version of the software developed for use.
This year’s MinneMUDAC competition students include
math and computer science majors Jacob James and Colton Snyder, math major
Trevor Krason and computer science major Karissa Schipke.
Mines offers a number of degrees and specializations
that allow graduates to quickly become industry leaders in highly sought fields
of data analytics. These include, computer science, computer engineering with an Artificial
Intelligence and Machine Learning specialization, and mathematics with specialization
in data science alongside Ph.D.
graduate programs in data science and engineering.