Southwest Airlines Datathon

The Center for Business Analytics will partner with Southwest Airlines to offer the 2020 datathon for graduate students.

What is the Datathon?

Drexel LeBow’s annual datathon is an analytics competition that tasks teams of graduate students with leveraging data to solve a business challenge for an organization. During the one-day event, teams of 5-7 graduate students turn a business problem into a series of statistical questions, design a technical approach, and use data analysis and technology skills to develop solutions.

Students will interact with Southwest Airlines throughout the day, showcasing their business problem solving abilities and analytics approaches to the organization.

At the conclusion of the datathon, teams will present their insights to a panel of judges comprised of Southwest Airlines professionals and Drexel LeBow faculty, sharing data-driven insights related to the business problem, the scope of their analyses, technical challenges, overall solutions, implementation plan, and expected impact.

Students use their own laptops and are provided access to a computer lab with software applications such as SAS, R, and Python. Dr. Murugan Anandarajan, professor of Decision Sciences and MIS, will serve as the faculty advisor overseeing the challenge.

Meals and refreshments will be provided to participants.

Participant Eligibility

To be eligible to participate, team members must be currently-enrolled Drexel LeBow graduate students interested or proficient in core techniques such as data or text mining, machine learning, and statistical modeling. Individuals who register will be contacted closer to the event to form and/or confirm teams.

Datathon Challenge

Summary and specifics of the datathon challenge are forthcoming.