The Case Studies in Data Analysis Poster Competition was held online on June 1, 2020. This year we have designed two case studies:

Case Study 1: Predicting hourly electricity demand in Ontario

Case Study 2: Predicting podcast popularity in iTunes

There were seven teams participated in the Case Study 1, and four teams participated in the Case Study 2. In total, there were 31 students from nine universities who have participated in the competition. We have invited eight judges to evaluate all the teams’ work. Each of the teams’ posters was carefully assessed and evaluated by four judges during May 26–May 31. A consensus meeting of the judges was held to make the final ranking of the teams’ work on June 1, 2020. The award committee selected two winning teams for each case study. One honourable mention was also selected for the Case Study 1. Each of the winning teams will receive an award with a value of $750 from SSC. The Canada Energy Regulator has kindly supported one of the awards for the Case Study 1. Every student in the competition will receive a certificate of participation.

The competition results are as follows:

Case Study 1

Judges

Dr. Jose Ribas Fernandes, Canada Energy Regulator

Dr. Ehsan Karim, University of British Columbia

Dr. Nasri Bouchra, University of Montréal

Carolyn Augusta, University of Saskatchewan

 

Winner 1:

Poster Title: Smoothers, harmonic autoregression, and gradient boosting for seasonal time series: Predicting hourly electricity demand in Ontario

University: University of Alberta

Team Members: Xilai Fu, Danyi Liu, Ree Yang, Yijia Yu

Mentor: Matthew Pietrosanu

From left to right: Xilai Fu, Danyi Liu, Ree Yang, Yijia Yu.

 

Winner 2 (The Canada Energy Regulator (CER) Award):

Poster Title: On-line Bayesian prediction of hourly electricity demand for the residential sector in Ontario

University: McGill University

Team Members: Victoire Michal, Paritosh Kumar Roy, Dirk Douwes-Schultz

Mentor: Dr. Alexandra M. Schmidt

 

From top (left) to bottom: Dirk Douwes-Schultz, Victoire Michal, Paritosh Kumar Roy

 

Honourable Mention:

Poster Title: From time series models to neural networks: Predicting energy usage in Ontario

University: University of Toronto

Team Members: Amin Kharaghani, Huiyan (Ashley) Mao, Michael Prashad, Shuting Lou

Mentor: Dr. Wendy Lou

Case Study 2

Judges

Dr. Kathryn Morrison, McGill University

Dr. Derek Bingham, Simon Fraser University

Dr. Xuan Li, University of Minnesota

Dr. Chel Hee Lee, University of Calgary

 

Winner 1:

Poster Title: Forecasting iTunes podcast popularity out-of-sample: Using in-sample validation for longitudinal and matching method

University: Carleton University and University of Waterloo

Team Members: Melissa Van Bussel (Carleton), Dylan Spicker (Waterloo)

Mentor: Dr. Song Cai

From left to right: Melissa Van Bussel, Dylan Spicker

 

Winner 2:

Poster Title: Predicting podcast popularity in iTunes

University: Memorial University of Newfoundland

Team Members: Inwook Back, Shu Li

Mentor: Dr. Zhaozhi Fan

 

The award committee would like to acknowledge all the teams and their mentors who put up great efforts in the competition! Thanks also go to Dr. Kathryn Morrison for her excellent work in preparing for Case Study 1, and to the team in Canada Energy Regulator (Dr. José Ribas Fernandes, Dr. Ryan Hum, Mantaj Hundal, Lukas Hansen, Michael Nadew, Matthew Hansen) for their excellent work in preparing for Case Study 2 and for providing an award to support Case Study 1. We also thank all the judges for their hard work in making valuable decisions about selecting the winners and honourable mentions in the competition. Last but not all the least, we would also like to take this opportunity to thank Michelle Benoit, Marie-Pierre Nantel, Dr. Changbao Wu, and Dr. Angelo Canty for their efforts, help, and support in preparing for the competition.

The award committee: Dr. Ehsan Karim, Dr. Chel Hee Lee; Dr. Kathryn Morrison, and Dr. Pingzhao Hu (Chair)