On Saturday, February 21, IIT Stuart School of Business hosted the 2015 Advanced Analytics Competition at Illinois Institute of Technology Downtown Campus. The competition is a new initiative designed to give students in analytics and public policy programs an opportunity to apply their skills to a real-world data problem.

Martin L. Bariff, associate professor of information systems and assistant director of the M.S. Marketing Analytics and Communication program at IIT Stuart, worked with industry contacts to identify a research question and relevant data sets for the competition.

Graduate student teams were recruited from IIT Stuart, University of Chicago, DePaul University, and Northwestern University, from programs including IIT Stuart’s Marketing Analytics and Public Administration programs; University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy; DePaul University’s Leadership in Policy Studies, Marketing, and Predictive Analytics programs; and Northwestern University’s M.S. Analytics program.

Teams were provided with computer lab space, access to analytics software, and data files on City of Chicago building permits and building violations. They had approximately six hours to develop their own research question, clean and analyze the supporting data, and develop a presentation that offered recommendations and actionable insights. Students were working with large data files, with more than 50 variables, and 1.2 million rows of data points.

A panel of judges heard the four team presentations, and the results were tallied independently and announced at IIT Stuart’s 3rd Annual Advanced Marketing Analytics Symposium. Northwestern University earned first place, with a crystal award and $500 cash prize offered by IIT Stuart.

“All of the teams achieved a remarkable feat to analyze and present their findings within such a short timeframe,” noted Bariff. “The judges were impressed with the quality of the analysis and presentations from all of the competing teams.”

IIT Stuart would like to recognize the outstanding work of all of the teams, with a special congratulations to the students who represented IIT Stuart: Congying Lin, Liang Zhang, Siyu Song, Changyue An, and Henri Miller.