Students use competition to solve Colts data challenge
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Butler University has unveiled the winners of the annual Crossroads Classic Analytics Challenge, which saw teams from Butler, Indiana University, Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame work to solve a real-world challenge using data.
In this year’s event, the teams were tasked with creating a model to help the Indianapolis Colts better predict the number of actual attendees for games at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Teams from Purdue and Butler took home a share of $10,000 in scholarships – with one team from each school also getting championship rings – and Butler University Senior Lecturer Jason Davidson says the Colts see a benefit as well.
“All of the IP that was just presented on Friday, they’re going to take that and actually deploy it in their business,” said Davidson. “So, they’re giving scholarship dollars to the students, but then also in return, they’re getting a real-world problem solved that they absolutely are needing. So, it’s really kind of a win-win.”
The challenge began last month when about 200 undergraduate and graduate students attended the final Colts game in Indianapolis where they were presented with the capstone business problem they needed to solve.
The Colts provided historical game attendance data to the students, who were asked to predict if people who purchased tickets would actually showing up to the game.
“It’s easy to track who purchased the tickets, but what we wanted to know is if they purchased the tickets and they’re actually going to show up to the game, because as you know, showing up to the game is an additional source of income through parking, through vending, through all these other things that are going to happen,” said Davidson. “So they gave us a list of a series of different predictors that could potentially be used as indicators that someone’s going to show up to a game.”
The teams presented their solutions to a panel of Indianapolis Colts organization members. The winners include:
Graduate Division
- 1ST PLACE ($5,000 + championship rings): Purdue University – Amisha Turkel, Tvisha Goswami, Nikhil Chopra, Nikhitha Siddi
- 2nd PLACE ($2,000): Purdue University – Yamini Ambati, Shikhar Kanaskar, Ayan Basak, Sanket Gupta
- 3rd PLACE: Indiana University – Dheeraj Jeevagasami, Sumitha Thattai, Sasidev Mahendran, Akhil Venugopal
- 4th PLACE: Indiana University – Ashish Patidar, Rajesh Sharma, Shachi Chaugule
Undergraduate Division
- 1ST PLACE ($2,000 + championship rings): Butler University – Kate Edwards, Izzy Austin, Adam Crozier, Maddie Neely
- 2nd PLACE ($1,000): Butler University – Andrea Marchi, Matt Miller, Jack Leman, Grant Nailor, Jack Parcell
- 3rd PLACE: Indiana University – Sparsh Nair, Gautam Hair, Ishan Dhawan, Tri Nguyen
During the course of the month-long competition, participants took part in several academic education events, including a sports analytics town hall.
Butler, in its role as host of the CCAC, also hosted a 12-hour datathon for undergraduate students who had not yet completed the course work required for the grand case competition.
Mitch Tor is a senior at Butler and participated in the datathon. Unlike the grand case competition where participants had a month to work on their solutions, the datathon students came in not knowing what they were going to work on.
Tor said the competition put a strong emphasis on problem solving.
“The ability to do that just a short window with limited time forces you to go through the process over and over again in your head and really hone in on what worked and what didn’t,” said Tor. “And ever since I’ve just been kind of sitting here looking at the data even though the competition passed weeks ago…just kind of obsessed with getting the best results possible out of the project has been something that I didn’t expect to see coming. But it really has kind of kicked off a path of learning that I didn’t didn’t foresee.”
The Crossroads Classic rotates among the participating universities each year, and next year, it will be held at the Indiana University campus in Bloomington. But Davidson says Butler may continue to host the datathon based on the success of this year’s event.
You can learn more about the CCAC by clicking here.