More than 50 teams from four Singapore universities faced off in the search for a solution to a global banking scenario at the inaugural SAS Analytics Competition in end January 2014.

Students were challenged to generate a predictive model using the data they were given. The three-day competition, of which the SMU Business Intelligence & Analytics SIG was a co-organiser, was designed to give students an opportunity to see how using analytics is valuable to industries like banking and finance.

Five teams, two from SMU, were shortlisted for the finals to present their models to a panel of judges comprising of practitioners and veterans from the banking and finance industry.

In the end, a team comprising three Year-Four students from the SMU School of Information Systems emerged as runner-up, while the other team came in fifth. 

Said Mr Lee Yao Zong, leader of the runner-up team, “As a team comprising of Business & Intelligence Analytics majors, we appreciate this opportunity to further the breadth and depth of our data mining knowledge. More importantly, this competition was an opportunity for us to test and validate our ability to apply our theoretical knowledge.

With each team possessing different niche skill sets, we learned more about different perspectives in approaching the problem and at the same time, forged friendships through our interactions with one another. 

In essence, the competition was a good taste of the everyday life being a data analyst — it was intense, intellectually-stimulating and incredible.”

Added Mr Hans Benjamin Carter, leader of the other SMU finalist team, “It was a challenging competition as the case given us was pretty realistic, thus this was a good opportunity to apply what we have learnt in the classroom to the real world. 

My team’s biggest takeaway is that we could not have accomplished what we did in the short span of three days if each of us did not play our part. I am glad to say we learn the most from the process itself, of getting to understand how Data Analytics is really useful no matter what field you are in.”  

[Photo: The team, comprising (from left) Kenneth Chai Kang Rui, Lee Yao Zong and Sim Li Chien from SMU School of Information Systems, emerged second at the inaugural SAS Analytics Competition.]