The WiDS Datathon encourages women to hone their data science skills through a predictive analytics challenge focused on social impact, bringing people together across borders to work in teams. This year, there were more than 3,000 registrants from 85 countries.
The results show that 80% of the WiDS Datathon registrants identified as female, which is unusual as Kaggle reports that typically 80%+ of competitors in comparable data science online competitions are male. More than 70% of the WiDS Datathon survey respondents said that they gained new skills in data science by participating in this year’s competition.
The WiDS Datathon attracts seasoned data scientists as well as beginners. Survey results show that 35% of respondents characterized themselves as beginners, and 45% as intermediate expertise level. In addition, 44% of respondents had never competed in any machine learning or predictive analytics competition.
“We all thoroughly enjoyed our first Kaggle competition and the opportunity to get our hands on a real-world data set outside of our comfort zone. For some of us, this was a great first experience with data science. For others, it was an opportunity to try out new models. All of us appreciated the opportunity to collaborate with teammates we don’t work with every day and learn along the way.” — Source Allies team
This year’s WiDS Datathon focused on patient health through data from MIT’s GOSSIS (Global Open Source Severity of Illness Score) initiative. The Global WiDS team, in collaboration with the West Big Data Innovation Hub, and the WiDS Datathon Committee, spearheaded the WiDS Datathon 2020. The competition was hosted on Kaggle, an online community of data scientists and machine learners.
Winners of the WiDS Datathon 2020 were announced during the Women in Data Science (WiDS) Conference on March 2, 2020, at Stanford University. The three winning teams were:
1st place: Women Power, from Israel
2nd place: nullset, from Ukraine
3rd place: Prevision.io, from France
One of the winning teams has been competing in the WiDS datathon since its inception in 2018. “We first teamed up to compete three years ago and actually placed 5th at the WiDS Datathon in 2018,” said Iryna Ivanenko from team nullset. “That was a good start, but today we’re so happy to finish in second place out of a field of such impressive competition. As a Data Science Lead at Women Who Code Kyiv, which organized the WiDS Kyiv 2018 event, I’ve seen first hand how these WiDS events encourage women in the field.”
These teams and their fellow competitors used various tools to surface patterns and insights from Intensive Care Unit (ICU) data, developing models to predict survival.
The winners were among 951 teams that competed in this year’s WiDS Datathon. The three winning teams and many other participants have continued to build on their participation, submitting research papers as part of a new phase of the Datathon, and joining online events such as the MIT COVID-19 Challenge series this month.
A big thank you to all of the WiDS Datathon participants, and congratulations to the winners. Stay tuned to the newsletter and #WiDSDatathon to get the latest updates and learn more about the continued success and growth of the datathon!