We encourage you to participate in pre-event workshops to learn data visualization and analysis techniques, especially if you have not worked with large datasets before. Typical Data Fest data sets contain 1-2 GBs of data and you may not be able to prepare and analyze the data in Excel.

Workshops:
Data Visualization with Tableau
Data Visualization with R

Resources:
Data Visualization – Research Guides at the University of Delaware
Working with Data – Research Guides at University of Delaware

Mentors will be available throughout the weekend to help you as you work through the data. 
Participants are not required to stay at the event venue during the event, but any work related to the data must be done at the event venue.

Before gaining accessibility of the dataset, you must sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement by agreeing to the terms of use and entering your name and email address. At the end of the DataFest each participant must delete all data from thumb drives, hard drives, etc. The data is sensitive.
Should members of your team drop out at the last minute, you may be merged with another team that is also missing members.
There will be friendly Mentors present. Feel free to ask anything. This is not an exam, but a collaborative competition. Do not expect the Mentors to write code for you, do data management, etc. They are there to help point you in the right direction, but you’re responsible for getting there on your own.

Each team must give a 5-minute presentation summarizing their findings to a panel of judges composed of faculty and professionals from different fields. Feedback will be given to each team including one reason why they were selected for that award, one outstanding comment, and one area of consideration for improvement. Presentations are judged based on insight, visualization, use of external data and communication.  There will be a winning team in each of the four following categories: Best Visualization, Best Insight, Best Use of External Data. Additional recognition may be given for Judges’ Choice if a presentation is notable or outstanding in some other way.  

Judging will begin on Sunday at 12:00 pm. 

Teams will have 5 minutes and 3 slides to make their case. You will be provided a rubric to take notes on to help keep teams organized. It’s strongly recommended that you make note of teams that are especially strong as you watch the presentations so that the deliberation conversation can be as efficient as possible.

For sponsorship opportunities:
Contact Information: dsi-info@udel.edu

The data sets used in DataFest are ​proprietary​ and are only to be used for the purposes of the American Statistical Association’s DataFest. By using this data, you agree to:

1. During participation in DataFest, ​store​ and ​manage​ the data ​securely​ and ​privately​.
2. Erase all data​ after your DataFest participation is complete.
3. Not identify or attempt to identify​ the information contained in the dataset, ​nor contact​ any of the individuals whose information is contained in the dataset.
4. Comply with ​all applicable U.S. federal and state laws and ​regulations​ relating to the maintenance of the dataset, the safeguarding of the confidentiality of the dataset, and the use and disclosure of the dataset.
5. Not publish​ results of your analysis of the data except that the final products of the competition (video, slide deck, one-page summary) may be displayed on team members’ websites and on campus DataFest websites.
6. Not share ​the data with anyone who is not a participant of DataFest.

By registering to attend and attending this event, you are consenting to the use of your appearance, image and voice in the production and in any promotion or use of the production in any media.