The American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest 2025 @ Edinburgh was held on March 21 - 23, 2025 with participation from the University of Edinburgh undergraduate students.
ASA DataFest25@EDI
The School of Mathematics hosted the American Statistical Association DataFest at Edinburgh on March 21–23, for the 4th time! ASA DataFest is a weekend-long undergraduate data analysis competition where teams of 2–5 undergraduates work to reveal insights from a rich, complex, and surprise dataset.
In this competition, 40 students from 6 different schools across the University of Edinburgh competed in 10 teams over the weekend. 12 academic staff, postgraduate students, and data scientists from industry helped them as consultants in analysing the given dataset. Participants worked together in the Hawthorn Teaching Room at the Nucleus Building and also spent time socialising with each other and data scientist consultants.
The data in this run of DataFest was from Savills, an international commercial real estate firm that helps businesses find a place to lease offices. Savills provided a dataset consisting of every known commercial leasing transaction within specific U.S. markets between 2018 and 2024. The pandemic was a disruptive moment for this sector of the economy, and Savills wanted to know what advice they can give to clients in specific markets within the Legal, Financial Services, or Tech sectors as the recovery continues. The challenge was to inform Savills of notable trends or microtrends in the commercial real estate market that could be used to advise clients on where, when, whether, and how to locate their offices.
For this challenge, teams were asked to present their findings to a panel of judges in a six-minute presentation followed by a short Q&A.
Judges for ASA DataFest 2025 @ EDI:
- Bruce Worton – Reader in Statistics at School of Mathematics
- Lanxin Li – Postdoctoral Research Associate in Statistics at School of Mathematics
- Nevil Hopley – Senior Data Analyst at Scottish Qualifications Authority
- Rosie Wilkie – Head of External Engagement at School of Mathematics
After the presentations, the winners were announced and received prizes, gift cards, and free memberships to the American Statistical Association and the Royal Statistical Society, at the end of the event on Sunday evening.
ASA DataFest 2025 @ EDI Awards:
🏆 Best Insights: Cs Crocodiles Team
Mostafa Ebid, Rupen Maharjan, Yilun Zhou – “Are tech companies relocating?”
🏆 Best Visualisation: The 4 Yutes of Runity Team
Jack Taylor, Reuben Forman, Ian Little, Onno Sharp – “An XAI Approach to Understanding Property Retention Patterns Among Savills’ Clientele”
🏆 Best Use of Outside Data: The Bayesian Bandits Team
Kian Hampson-Bahia, Glen Filson, Cameron Matheson, Akrit Ghimire – “Relocation of construction leases”
🏅 Honourable Mention: Helicopta Team
Mako Shibata, Jonathan Furtek, Poorvash Muthumaheswaran, Jiongxiang Zhou, Luke Hampshire – “Leasing Trends in the Healthcare and sector in the US”
🏅 Honourable Mention: Ctrl Alt DEFEAT Team
Gregory Hamvas Hummerich, Andy Wu – “Commercial Real Estate Market Trends in Manhattan”
What is DataFest?
Are you up for a data challenge? Want to mingle with data analysis professionals from industry and academia? Compete for prizes and glory?
ASA DataFest is a data analysis competition where teams of up to five undergraduate students attack a large, complex, and surprise dataset over a weekend. Your job is to represent your school by finding and communicating insights into these data. The teams that impress the judges will win prizes as well as glory for their school. Everyone will have a great experience, lots of food, and fun! The surprise dataset will be provided by the ASA. You can read about past datasets, other institutions participating, and the global DataFest event here.
ASA DataFest is also a great opportunity to gain the experience that employers are looking for. Having worked on a data analysis problem at this scale will certainly help make you a good candidate for any position that involves analysis and critical thinking, and it will provide a concrete example to demonstrate your experience during interviews.
ASA DataFest @ EDI is organised by the School of Mathematics, at the University of Edinburgh. The organising committee members are Serveh Sharifi, Vanda Inacio, and Ozan Evkaya.
Testimonials
While ASA DataFest is a competition, the main goal of the event is to promote collaboration. Here are some testimonials from past participants:
“I highly encourage all students to take part in this event. Not only is it incredibly fun, but it also gives you an opportunity to showcase/develop your analytical, teamwork, and time management skills, all of which are highly valuable to a potential employer.”
“I think everyone should sign up for DataFest! No matter what your background is, you will certainly provide valuable insight that other teammates might not have! Beyond that, it is really fun to muck around in realistic data and see what insights you can find.”
“The event was a great opportunity to challenge my coding skills and work with people I had not met before. At the end of the weekend, I had made new friends and learnt a lot. I strongly recommend it.”