Mines News

A team of South Dakota Mines mathematics and computer science students captured top honors at the MinneMUDAC data science competition held at Target Field in Minneapolis, Minn. Mines took home a second place honorable mention and was one of three teams recognized among the 28 universities in the undergraduate division.

Mines was among the smallest schools at the event, but the institution has established a history of doing very well at this competition with a number of top scoring teams and individuals during the last five years. This year the Mines undergraduate team finished above other schools like Syracuse, University of Wisconsin Madison and the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering.

Each year the MinneMUDAC competition offers a new challenge. This year, event organizers, MinneAnalytics, teamed up with the Minnesota Twins to develop a program that could predict gate attendance for home games during the 2023 season. Student teams were required to gain an understanding of how various factors influence attendance at Major League Baseball (MLB) games and then tasked to consider the Minnesota Twins and MLB as their clients.

“Our students did a very, very good job at analyzing the data and forecasting future MLB attendance,� says Kyle Caudle, Ph.D., a professor of mathematics at Mines and one of the team’s advisors. “One of the unique ideas the team came up with was to use an ensemble method (a way to aggregate multiple models to provide a more accurate prediction), they were the only team to consider this approach,� says Randy Hoover, Ph.D., a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the other team advisor. Sherwyn Braganza, a Ph.D. student in Data Science and Engineering at Mines, also mentored the team this semester and helped guide some of the data visualization.

A secondary prize will be awarded to the team with the predictions that come closest to reality in the fall at the conclusion of the baseball season. The winning team gets the chance to work with the Minnesota Twins to have their version of the software developed for use.

This year’s MinneMUDAC competition students include math and computer science majors Jacob James and Colton Snyder, math major Trevor Krason and computer science major Karissa Schipke.

Mines offers a number of degrees and specializations that allow graduates to quickly become industry leaders in highly sought fields of data analytics. These include, computer science, computer engineering with an Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning specialization, and mathematics with specialization in data science alongside Ph.D. graduate programs in data science and engineering.