Alvin Subakti (Mathematics 2017) and Maxwell Thomson (Statistics 2019) successfully won 3rd place in the event Data Analysis Competition (DAC) 2021 organized by the Statistics Student Association (HIMASTA) of the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology. The competition, which was held online, carried the theme “Data Analytics as Tools to Develop Innovation in Industrialization Towards The SDGs”. It was announced on September 4, 2021 after the final round took place.
Both of them managed to outperform more than 200 other teams that came not only from Indonesia, but also from other countries in Southeast Asia, considering that the competition was regional in scale.
Data Analysis Competition (DAC) is a regional student data analysis competition in Southeast Asia organized by Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember. The goal is to foster a competitive spirit and critical thinking in data analysis. It is hoped that through DAC 2021, data analysis skills among students will increase, so that they can develop industrial innovation, especially in the Southeast Asia region.
The idea they came up with in the competition was to develop a forecasting model (forecasting) menggunakan tree-based model that is random forest to predict a company’s stock price.
To the FMIPA UI Public Relations team, Alvin, one of the members explained that the development of the forecasting model was implemented as a prediction method to determine a company’s ability to survive in the future, as well as an early warning for owners and managers if the company enters a difficult period or will experience major losses.
“The idea refers to the purpose Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) number 9 on inclusive and sustainable industrialization. Where one of the factors in this industrialization is the ability of a company to survive, especially in difficult economic conditions such as during a pandemic. With this innovation (early warning system), companies can immediately take preventive action to prevent bankruptcy,” said Alvin.
In general, the competition scheme is divided into three stages, namely, preliminary, semifinal, and final. In the preliminary stage, Alvin and Maxwell process and analyze the data provided by the organizers as a basis for business recommendations for a case.
“Meanwhile, the semifinal stage is actually almost similar to the preliminary stage, except this time we were only given three hours to analyze the data and make a report,” Maxwell added.
In the final stage, both presented the results of the case analysis that had been made in the previous semifinal stage in front of the jury. The presentation session was then followed by a question and answer session between the jury and participants.
Their success is not without challenges, especially Alvin who is currently a final year student.
“In my opinion, the challenge is when I have to write my thesis, so when I join the competition, I need to divide my time between my thesis and the competition,” said Alvin.
Unlike Maxwell who had just finished his 4th semester, he admitted that his challenge at that time was that his knowledge in the data field was still quite minimal. However, Maxwell did not consider it as an obstacle, but rather considered it as an opportunity.
“Previously, I was in a team with Brother Alvin where we both had passion the same. During the last even semester break, I was again invited to join a data analysis competition. I accepted the invitation because I felt that this opportunity was good enough to develop skills and knowledge in the data field,” said Maxwell.
Pada akhir sesi wawancara, mereka mengungkapkan bahwa pengalaman lomba tersebut menjadi salah satu pengalaman menarik yang tidak mudah didapatkan. Dengan mengikuti perlombaan, banyak manfaat yang didapatkan seperti belajar agar tetap tenang saat bekerja di bawah tekanan dan keterbatasan waktu serta bertemu banyak orang-orang ahli yang mempunyai minat bidang yang sama.
The competition timeline starts from the registration stage (May 31 – July 8, 2021), the preliminary stage (July 11 – July 19, 2021), the announcement of the semifinalists (August 15, 2021), the technical meeting (August 21, 2021), the semifinal stage (August 28, 2021), the announcement of the finalists (August 29, 2021), and the final stage and announcement of the winners which will be announced after the webinar (September 4, 2021).
