ProLearners Create History at Data Science Society’s Academia Datathon!

Two teams from Manipal ProLearn made it to the finals of Data Science Society’s Academia Datathon and we certainly can’t stop raving about it!

When it comes to testing themselves against the very best, our students are always game! The event? The much revered international data science competition Academia Datathon. It was a three-day event that was organized by the Data Science Society, Sophia, Bulgaria and saw around 150 students participating from close to 10 universities worldwide. 

And the results made us proud! The teams from Manipal ProLearn dominated the event and two of them made it to the finals demonstrating their exceptional competitive skills and knowledge in the field of data science and cryptocurrency. 

The competition 

The objective: Students from all over the world with varying experience in data science and the domain of cryptocurrency competed internationally in this exciting datathon to build a successful investing/trading model on the cryptocurrency markets. The competition was incredibly strong too as it was a testing time for all the teams to showcase their learning from their data science training.

Source: datasciencesociety

All-round learning 

Today, education has to keep up with the fast-paced technological developments. Manipal ProLearn strongly believes that mere classroom training doesn’t help learners develop a holistic view of the subject. In today’s age, learning is live, collaborative and fun, especially in emerging fields like data science. So Manipal ProLearn constantly adapts to the changing learning processes to keep the students motivated as well as exposed to the latest in the field.

Learning by doing

The datathon event provided our students the opportunity to work on challenging business problems and to get mentored by experts from world-over. At ProLearn, we aim to provide global exposure to our students and what better way to do that than by partnering with influential data science experts across the globe? 

A total of 8 groups and 37 students from Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) participated in the datathon with one mission: To put their data science knowledge to the ultimate test. Our learners comprised 26% of all the participants. Check out this quick team introduction video to know more about them:

Behind the scenes

The faculty at ProLearn took on the mantle of being the mentors for the competing teams. Preparatory classes and webinars were conducted to introduce the key areas of machine learning thereby arming the students with the essential knowledge to work on the business case during the datathon. Guidance sessions by experts were also organised especially for the event. Additional resources were made available to the learners through the LMS, so they could continue preparing during their term break while being away from the campus.

At the pole position 

7 teams from Manipal made it through the first task of article writing and generating initial code, securing their place in the semi-finals. With a total of 19 international teams that made it this far, MAHE constituted 37% of the teams at this stage.

The winning move 

Two teams from Manipal, Team KAUTILYA and Team RISE battled it out and made it all the way to the finals. In the nail-biting final round, our teams bagged the 4th and 5th positions to create history and make us proud. The Malaysian team, team #UMALAYA took the gold while #Cryptomonkeys from Sofia University were the runners up. 

That’s not all. Three of our teams earned a special acknowledgement from the jury for their extraordinary efforts! Way to go ProLearners!

Team OCCAMDATANINJAS received a special mention for doing a marvellous job in building an appropriate model for prediction.

Team KAUTILYA was congratulated by the jury for creating one of the best models. 

Team VPSS.CSV received a positive response from the jury for their practical solutions.

Catch all the action from the datathon here:

And finally the detailed video of the announcement of the winners is here:

Celebrations galore

Such an achievement called for a celebration indeed. The teams were recognized in a felicitation ceremony. Their interest, efforts, commitment, zeal and impressive learning curve were acknowledged in the presence of honourable members of the Academic Ops team. We congratulate all the participants of Academia Datathon and wish them all the best for their future endeavours! 

If you too would like to find the true depths of your data science skills, participating in global datathons and related events is the perfect stage to test your knowledge. At Manipal ProLearn, not only will you be able to understand the complete dynamics of data analytic techniques, but also get the chance to prove your mettle against the very best in the world. 

Written By

Aditi Bhat