Hao & Yingqi, Fall-2014 graduate of MS BAPM shared their experience on Alteryx Data Challenge:

What a great excitement it was to win the first place in the Alteryx Data Challenge! As is known to every participant, the competition was quite an exhausting experience. We spent almost two days searching online and finally decided to work on a dataset about adult diabetes. Then we put even more effort on data exploration and cleaning. For example, we used tools in the Alteryx software to explore the data, trying to find out any patterns, distributions and correlations of variables. After finishing all these, we managed to get a better understanding of the data, so the next step was to sample the data and build models.

The most challenging part in the process was that the Alteryx platform was completely new to us, meaning that we had to try our best to get familiar with the software while attempting to model the data at the same time. That was easier said than done. Fortunately, the software is quite versatile and user-friendly. It helped us deliver a satisfactory solution in the end. Overall, my team agrees that it was a very rewarding learning experience. It not only tested our understanding of business analysis but also gave us an opportunity to connect with the business world.

Currently, my team is working on our poster for the Inspire 2015 Conference. We will get a chance to share our experience with the participants at the conference from the industry and academia. I feel that it would be a great honor for us and the MSBAPM program. My team is eagerly looking forward to the conference.

Memorial weekend at UConn School of Business came with an informative workshop on Python Programming Language, by Dylan Blanchard on Thursday, May 21, 2015. The best thing about this workshop was it did not assume any previous experience with Python and started with introduction and basics, covering a major part of Analytics.

The enlightening workshop was about the introduction of Python, including how to install IPython notebook, and the popularity. It explained about the basic functions, like how to define the data type and simple function creation techniques. Not just this, but an interesting feature it taught us was about how to import a data-set from a website. And then the workshop covered the modeling part explaining about logistic regression, decision tree and principle component analysis models and finally how to analyse, evaluate and score the models.

Overall it was a brief interactive introduction of Python and its application in Analytics Industry and students found it quite an informational workshop.

A very warm and overwhelming goodbye to the students who graduated in May this year; we wish them a flourishing career and a prosperous life ahead. The Graduation Ceremony was enthralling not just for the students graduating in May, but also for the current MSBAPM students who attended the event.

    

   

 

The students who graduated were awarded with different funny and interesting titles like:

1. Excellence in Group Work – Yinghui Ye
2. Loch Ness Award – Yiyao Zhang
3. Foot in Mouth Award – Emily Hill
4. Wikipedia Award – Stanley L Nolan
5. Smart Cookie – Shan Zhou
6. Firecracker Award – Snehal Joshi
7. Puzzle Poser Award – Yiyao Zhang
8. Class Best Friend Award – SrikanthVarma Tirumalaraju
9. Busy Bee Award – Wei Sheng Liao
10. Above and Beyond Award – Shranish Joshi
11. LOL Award – Michael Harvey Levesque
12. Future Detective Award – Carl Lee Dean
13. Class Fashionista Award – Mengfei Yang
14. Class Statistician Award – Robert Alan Riccio
15. LifeSaver Award – Xing Wang
16. Dewey Decimal Award – Si Qin
17. Carpe Diem Award – Steven Theodore Brown
18. Duct Tape Award – Sai Madhukar Srinivasa
19. Swiss Army Knife Award – Joydeep Banerjee
20. Grandma’s Dumpling Award – Neha Kamineni
21. Technology Wizard Award – Ivan Theobalds
22. It’s 5 O’clock somewhere Award – Hema Sree Kamineni

After an entertaining round of awards, it got even more interesting when faculties got awarded with a couple of amusing and interesting titles like:

1. Is It A Yes Or No Award – Prof. Alpesh Kumar Tailor
2. Most Assignments Award – Prof. Xin Xin Li and so on.

John A. Elliott, the Dean of UConn School of Business wished the students good luck and spoke about the journey of students here at UConn and our new Graduate Career Advisor, Katherine Duncan, was officially welcomed and introduced to the MSBAPM program during the ceremony.

   

   

After the speech by the Dean, dinner was served and the bar was opened up for drinks and socializing. There was an elegant spread of entrees, mains and desserts and a fine assortment of red and white wines and beers. Cheery conversations filled the room. Graduating students, professors and other attendees seemed to thoroughly utilize the networking opportunity. Everybody was seen clicking pictures with friends and colleagues to memorialize this day.

The students and the faculties said a warm and amicable goodbye to students who graduated with kind words, and capturing a few memorable moments with graduate students. A few graduate students expressed their memories at UConn School of Business and expressed about their awesome journey at UConn not just because it helped them shape their careers but also because they had an amazing time with students and faculties during their learning experience at UConn. It was overall a great networking event for the students and the faculties.