DataFest Inspires Students to Learn by Doing Data Analysis

June 2026 / NEWS STORY
by Nick Wilson

The academic competition that tests students' statistical/data science chops held its biggest event yet.

The third in-person American Statistical Association’s DataFest competition took place on the Cal Poly campus April 17-19 in the Advanced Technology Laboratories and Bonderson Center with roughly 140 students in attendance, including teams from Cal Poly, CSU Monterey Bay and UC Santa Barbara.

The competition, hosted by the Statistics Department, resembles a hackathon-style experience. Over a roughly 48-hour period, students were tasked with analyzing large datasets. This year, the topic focused on patient journeys and hospital encounters, with information provided by a Kansas hospital.

Students collaborated in teams to coordinate their work and presented their findings in person to judges.

The winning teams (comprised of all Cal Poly students) were the following:

• Best in Show: Whole Lotta R (Julia Aptekar, Addie Weaver, and Scarlet Kwan)
• Best Visualization: DataFeasters (Emi Degembe, Alexi Casco, Barbara Ibrahim, and Nick Carboni)
• Best Use of Outside Data: 67th Percentile (Natalie Sakamoto, Rhea Chellani, Gabby Apsay, and Sylvia Du).

"My favorite thing about DataFest was getting to interact with all the teams,” Aptekar said. “Everyone was sharing ideas and code and being so encouraging that it didn't really feel like a competition at all. I ended up bonding with a lot of classmates I don't normally get to spend much time with.”

Last year, more than 80 students from two universities, Cal Poly and CSU Monterey Bay, participated with teams of students winning Best in Show, Best Visualization and Best Use of Outside Data awards.

“This is an amazing experience for students, which they can cite on their resumes, showing they’ve worked on an unstructured data problem,” said Emily Robinson, a statistics faculty member and event coordinator. “It’s an extremely applicable skill to learn how to work as a team, sometimes with people they’ve never met. And the students really liked this data set this year.”

In presenting and meeting a panel of judges, students hone their public speaking and learn from feedback and questions from industry leaders.

The ASA committee partners with a different company each year to provide regional events and a real-world data set, a challenge that can be approached in a multitude of ways, which can lead to unique solutions and insights with many teams tackling the same challenge from different directions.

Students work in teams of about three to five students, receive their challenge at 5 p.m. Friday, work until about 10 p.m. that evening, then all day Saturday, and finalize their work on Sunday before presenting to industry judges on the final day of the competition.

Additionally, coordinators are always seeking judges from industry and continued giving support to fund growing costs.

Anyone interested in judging can go to: https://earobinson95.github.io/calpoly-datafest/judges.html

“We see what this experience does for students,” Robinson said. “We're very excited about it and eager to see it continue to grow and thrive.”