Rules and Regulations

Teams may contain 1-5 students. All participants must be current students of the University of Kansas School of Business. Teams may either be all undergraduate or all graduate students. Individuals are permitted to compete as one-person teams.

Cash prizes will be awarded by the judges to winning teams. First place will receive $1000. Second place will receive $750. Third place will receive $500. Honorable mentions will receive $100. These prizes are to be divided among team members. 

Project submissions must include an analytics report and the affiliated R, Python, or SQL scripts and will be uploaded via a Qualtrics form on the data.ku.edu website. Information, code, or ideas which are sourced from outside the participants must be cited properly. For example, bits of code may be copied from stack overflow but must be noted with a citation for the source. Submissions will be analyzed, to identify original and borrowed materials and check citations. The amount of non-original material will not be directly penalized, but may influence judging decisions. 

Project submissions which are turned in after the deadline will not be considered. If there are significant technical issues or extenuating circumstances which prevent timely submission, contact Will Duncan to determine whether an exception can be made.

Analytics and Information Systems committee members are not permitted to compete, and may not assist or advise a competitor. 

Teams only contain those participants whose names and information is submitted during the registration. Teams are encouraged to collaborate internally, but may not involve anyone outside the team. Other participants, faculty, staff, committee members, students, or any member of the general public may not lend assistance or advice on the competition materials for the duration of the competition. 

Round one project materials are open source and instructions for accessing them will be shared via email when registration closes. Round two project materials are proprietary. Teams which progress to the second round will be required to sign a student agreement and adhere to the Data Management Plan established by the Kansas Data Science Consortium. Instructions will be provided to teams prior to granting access to the materials for the second round. There will be an informational session about data access on April 10 at 5:00 PM. Attendance at this session by at least one team member is required to receive second round materials. Questions about data security, policy, or procedure can be sent to Gryffin Eason. Technical assistance requests should be sent to the IT Customer Service Center. 

Team projects which do not contain data may be posted and shared publicly. This can include code, documents, and models. No portion of the dataset from either the first or second round may be publicized. 

Judges include Will Duncan, Assistant Research Professor, Kansas Data Science Consortium, Karthik Srinivasan, Assistant Professor, Analytics, Information, and Operations Management, and Debabrata "Deb" Dey, Director, Analytics, Information, and Operations Management.

Results of judging will be shared via email to all participants and will be posted on the data.ku.edu website. All participants will receive a certificate of completion, members of winning teams will receive an additional award certificate. 

Presentation at the April 29th KDSC Conference is required for all winning teams. All second round finalist teams are encouraged to present if they so choose and should contact Will Duncan. These presentations will be part of a poster session featuring student data science projects from KU, K-State, and Wichita State. The conference is 9:00am-3:30pm, all participants are invited to attend. Additional information can be found on data.ku.edu

Participants are required to behave appropriately during this competition. This is a friendly tournament and welcomes competitors of all identities and backgrounds. Unsportsmanlike, aggressive, or malicious behavior will not be tolerated and may result in individuals or teams being excused from the competition.

Participants or teams who are found to be in violation of these rules and regulations will receive a written warning and may be dismissed from the competition, as the judges see fit. If you have witnessed, or been subjected to a rule violation please contact Will Duncan immediately.