Nigel Andrew is an MSc ’21 candidate who believes that data-driven insights are the future of business. In his article below, he writes about his experience with the Hack the Case analytics competition, held virtually April 8-20, and the challenges he and his team faced over the course of two weeks.
Hack the Case is a fast-paced, intense, two week-long case competition hosted by Ivey with corporate partners SAS, Deloitte, and Scotiabank. It gave me and my fellow students the opportunity to apply what we’ve learned from the first two semesters at Ivey to real-world problems. There truly is no better time for this competition as we are weeks away from the start of the Ivey Analytics Lab. Hack the Case has given us the opportunity to gain experience working with real data. I am excited to share my experience with you – through SAS training, case release, analysis, and presentations – Hack the Case was an amazing experience for growth and development.
I was happy to know who my teammates were before the case began as it gave us time to meet each other, understand our backgrounds, build rapport, and have a game plan on how to approach the case. My group had a wide variety of undergraduate backgrounds, which enabled us to divide qualitative and quantitative tasks early and helped make our solutions diverse. Although two weeks seems like a long time to develop a recommendation for a team of five people, there were significant challenges we overcame along the way. Whether it was learning a new data-analysis tool, understanding the scale and scope of the project, or accessibility issues with the dataset, we persevered and made it work.
You said how many data points?
The first four days of the 12-day case competition is an introductory SAS course. We spent four hours each day with a data expert from SAS learning how to use the program – for many of us, it was our first time using the powerful statistical software. This training was quintessential to our success in analyzing the data and solving the case, as the case dataset had more than 185 million data points! Initially, this seemed daunting, but it really motivated me to learn SAS thoroughly such that the remaining eight days were smooth in terms of analytics implementation. After 16 hours of training, I was confident in the SAS environment and eager for the competition to begin.
Getting down to business
Immediately following the case release event, my teammates and I met to brainstorm and discuss ideas so that we were on the same page moving forward. Two teammates and I began to process the data while the others started to investigate the qualitative aspects of the Scotiabank case. We had daily meet-ups to track progress, share ideas, and ultimately prepared a cohesive recommendation to present to the judges. Along the way, we had the opportunity to work with professionals from Deloitte and SAS for guidance on how to approach the problem and how to further our analysis within SAS. Having these contacts throughout the case competition was my favourite part, as we were able to bounce our ideas off our mentors and see how industry professionals would challenge our approach.
That’s a wrap
After Hack the Case, I was incredibly impressed by the amount of knowledge I gained over the course of the two weeks. It has highlighted the importance of team collaboration, proficiency in data analytics, and provided me with the opportunity to work with real-world data. Even in a virtual environment, with our fair share of technical issues, my team persevered and presented our recommendation to a panel of judges from Ivey’s corporate partners. Even though we didn’t make it to the finals, I was so impressed by my peers and the innovative solutions they presented. I’m thankful for the opportunity to participate in Hack the Case and learn from the expertise of these corporate partners and build relationships with data-focused professionals. I have deepened my understanding of analytical techniques, and I have built strong relationships with my team members, which has helped me to prepare for my professional career.