Data Mining Competition Gears Up for 2016

2014 Iowa State team was first U.S. team to win first place

    Each year, national and international educational institutions from more than 20 countries take part in the Data Mining Cup (DMC) competition. This year’s competition begins April 6, and teams can begin registering March 9. Visit the DMC website for more information.

    In 2014, a team of Iowa State University graduate students topped 98 other universities from 28 countries to capture first place in the 15th annual Data Mining Cup (DMC). It was the first time a team from the United States won the competition.

    Teams had six weeks to develop a solution for a data mining problem about optimal return prognosis. They used an unidentified online store’s historical purchase data to create a model for new orders that predicted the probability of a purchase being returned.

    Iowa State team members and their departments are Guillermo Basulto-Elias (statistics), Fan Cao (statistics), Xiaoyue Cheng (statistics), Marius Dragomiroiu (computer science), Jessica Hicks (bioinformatics and computational biology), Cory Lanker (statistics), Ian Mouzon (statistics), Lanfeng Pan (statistics), and Xin Yin (bioinformatics and computational biology/statistics). Lanker and Mouzon were on the 2013 Iowa State team, which finished in fifth place.

    To read about the Iowa State team, visit the university website.