This October, Texas A&M University
2019 Picture Gallery 2019 Closing Ceremony

ABOUT

World's First & Only MLH Data Science Hackathon

For the first time, TAMU Datathon is banding together data enthusiasts from across multiple disciplines, skill levels, and universities. TAMU Datathon is a 24 hour event where companies, researchers, and hundreds of students immerse themselves in data science.

We’re coming together to solve real world challenges, learn about data science, hear from leaders in research, and compete for company and university prizes.

This all happens in a fun, interactive, and competitive way by providing our participants the option to take part in the Learner Track or the Competitor Track. We believe the TAMU Datathon will inspire students across all disciplines to integrate quality data-driven practices into their field of expertise.

LEARNER vs COMPETITOR

What does each track entail?

LEARNER

Not quite ready to compete? With just some basic knowledge of Python, we will take you through the all the stages of a good data science project, like data importing/preprocessing, descriptive stats & visualization, machine learning/model building, and report writing! You can even earn points during your journey for some sweet swag!

More Info

COMPETITOR

Try out your skills at a chance to win prizes from the university
and/or companies and gain massive bragging rights!

RESOURCES

How do I prepare?

Python

Python is one of the most widely used languages for data science. Open-sourced libraries such as Pandas and Scikit-Learn, as well as industry backed projects like Tensorflow and PyTorch make it one the most important skills to master in the world of data. You can find a multitude of tutorials, classes and books on learning it, but we can direct you to some resources which will help you start you journey with Python.

Learn with Codecademy Learn with Google

MATLAB

MATLAB makes data science easy with tools to access and preprocess data, and build machine learning and predictive models. You can apply domain-specific feature engineering techniques for sensor, text, image, video, and other types of data, and use point-and-click apps for training and comparing models. With model importers and exporters and support for ONNX, you can collaborate with peers using frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch, and MxNet. Once you have built your model, operationalize it as part of production IT systems or cloud services without recoding.

Free MATLAB Tutorial Free Deep Learning Tutorial MATLAB for Data Science

Data Science Classes

Growing interest in data science and a shift towards making education more accessible has put classes from the world's best schools at our fingertips. You can find classes from Stanford and MIT covering topics ranging from Information Theory to Machine Learning to Bayesian Statistics and more, all online. Here are some of the resources we believe will be useful for the Datathon.

MIT Harvard Caltech

SPONSORS

The TAMU Datathon would not be possible without our generous sponsors!
Interested in sponsoring us? Please fill out this form or email us at !

Meet Our Team!

team member
Josiah

Project Lead

team member
Allyson

Logistics

team member
Megan

Logistics

team member
Yun

Logistics & Design

team member
Abdullah

Marketing

team member
Andrew

Marketing

team member
Marina

Marketing

team member
Sorhan

Marketing

team member
Chinmay

Data & Development

FAQ

Something you want to know that's not on here?

  • Imagine 300 students. 1 weekend. Many company sponsors with datasets and prizes. As the first Datathon in Texas and one of the first in the USA, we are leading the charge to bring data science to a hackathon format at Texas A&M. It's designed for both data science novices and wizards. If you'd like to learn about how to start off, or use your skills to compete for some industry sponsored and handpicked prizes, stay tuned for more!

  • Any undergraduate or graduate student who is at least 18. Regardless of your experience, school, education, or background, as long as you are excited about learning, building, and having fun, we’re excited to have you!

  • We are excited that you are interested and will make sure you get something out of the datathon, no matter your skill level. That’s why we are having both learner and competitor tracks. We’ll have lots of resources including workshops and a bunch of mentors to help beginners get started.

    In addition, we’ll have some expert mentors in data science as well to help more advanced attendees that are interested in stretching their skills. Some basic understanding of Python will be assumed for the learner track. You can get started learning now with the resources mentioned above!

  • We are working hard to make it free for you! We'll throw in tons of swag, food, Wi-Fi, workspaces, and caffeine during your stay.

  • Teams can be made of up to four. You don’t need to have a team before the event or have one at all, but model building with friends is more fun! There will be plenty of time after the opening ceremony to form teams if you don't have one by then.

  • Our goal is that we find the right fit of people for our event. We really want to know that you will have a good time there and are excited to be there. In our applications we look carefully for this culture fit, asking ourselves if this person seems like they really want to be there. Furthermore, for learners, we don’t ask that you have any data science experience, but we would like to see some basic programming experience. For competitors, we are looking for qualified and driven data scientists.

  • Of course! We will have workshops running throughout the whole event. We will release the complete schedule on this website closer to the datathon.

  • We would love to provide travel reimbursements to all. Due to this being our inaugural event however, we just can’t do everything we’d like to do. Unfortunately, we will not be providing travel reimbursements this year. However, we will work hard to offer them next year!

    For people travelling from out of town, we will be releasing a google sheet soon which will help you plan your trip and sync rides for rideshares if needed.

  • TAMU Datathon will be held on the Texas A&M Campus in College Station, Texas, October 19-20, 2019, in the University Recreation Center.

    Address: Texas A&M Recreation Center, 797 Olsen Blvd, College Station, TX 77845.

  • The event is planned for October 19th - 20th, beginning at 9:00 AM on 19th and ending at 5:00 PM on 20th.

    As the event will last overnight, it's a good idea to bring a pillow and/or a sleeping bag, if you're planning to stay at the venue. If you're coming from out of town, you can book your own accomodations if you so wish.

  • The Learner Track will use Python and Jupyter Notebooks to take someone who has no or little experience in data science through the entire data science process to build their own analysis. We will cover essential Python packages for data science like NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn and Matplotlib.

    Our interactive lecture series will take you through data reading and cleaning, data visualization, model building (machine learning), tuning/validation/evaluation, and results presenting. You will have personal mentors who are experts in their field help you every step of the way. You can find more information here.

    Think you’re up for a challenge? Compete for prizes and bragging rights in the Competitor Track! We’ll have company workshops for you to attend as a competitor, but the challenges would expect familiarity with data science.

Major League Hacking 2020 Hackathon Season