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STA 175, Spring 2025

Welcome!

Welcome to STA 175! The goal of this course is to help you learn and practice skills that you will need to compete in the American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest Competition in Spring 2025.

DataFest is a competition that takes place across the nation each spring for undergraduate and graduate students. Competitors will work in teams to analyze a large real world data set, and then present their results to a panel of judges. Past data sets have come from TicketMaster, Olympic sports teams, and so on. Last year’s topic explored student interactions with electronic textbooks.

Participating in this competition is a great way to get experience working with large, messy data sets like those you would work with in the real world. It also helps you develop teamwork skills, as you will be competing in teams. As the competition is well-known, competing in the competition is also a great thing to add to your resume.

The Course: When and Where

  • Class Time: Wednesday: 3:30 PM - 4:45 PM (Eastern)
  • Class Room: Carswell 101
  • Faculty: Dr. Nicole Dalzell and Dr. Ciaran Evans
    • Dalzell: pronounce the Dal like “ball” with a “D”, and the `“zell” like “bell” with a “z”
  • Needed Materials: A Laptop computer, R, RStudio

The Competition: When and Where

DataFest 2025 will begin at 5:30 PM on Friday April 4, and conclude around noon on Sunday April 6.

You will be competing in teams of 2-5 students at Wake Forest. We will be in Manchester/Kirby for most of our work time, but we will be in other spaces around campus, as well.

Competition Levels

At DataFest, you will be competing in one of two competition levels.

Level 1 Teams: The Level 1 competition level is designed for students who are newer to statistics and data science. If you have taken STA 111, STA 112, and STA 214, you will be in this level.

Level 2 Teams: The Level 2 competition level is designed for students who have more experience with statistics. Students who have taken STA 363, STA 362, and so on, will be in this level.

The goal of having the two different levels is to allow you to compete with individuals whose level of statistics and data science experience is similar to your own. There will be one winning team at each level.

The Course: What will we be doing?

For our Level 1 teams, during each 75 minute class period you will work through an activity designed to help you learn or practice statistics, data science, and/or coding skills that will be useful for DataFest. We assume students have had some exposure to R through STA 112, so the activities will be building off of that level.

For our Level 2 teams, your class time will be spent competing in another competition, such as the WiDS 2025 datathon, a statistics and data science competition that opens in early January and finishes in April. This means that during your time in STA 175, you will actually be able to compete in two competitions! Please note that if you or your team would rather compete the Level 1 activities for practice rather than competing in WiDS, just let Dr. Dalzell or Dr. Evans know and you can switch. After WiDS concludes, you will be completing class activities for the last few weeks specifically designed to help you prepare as a team for DataFest.

All our course material will be on Canvas and our course website, and there is no textbook for this course.

Here is a rough schedule for our course, though this may change depending on our pace:

  • Week 1 Jan 15: EDA and Refresher in R
  • Week 2 Jan 22: Coding on the Cloud
  • Week 3 Jan 29: Data Wrangling and tidyR
  • Week 4 Feb 5: Regression
  • Week 5 Feb 12: Model Selection
  • Week 6 Feb 19: Regression Trees
  • Week 7 Feb 26: Text Analysis Day 1
  • Week 8 March 5: Text Analysis Day 2
  • Week 9: Spring Break (no class!)
  • Week 10 March 19: Competition Prep - Getting started with an analysis with an open ended research question
  • Week 11 March 26: Competition Prep - presenting work to a client
  • Week 12 April 2: Competition Week

We will not meet after April 6th (the end of DataFest), so our semester ends in April!

A Note about Perfume, Cologne, and Scented Products

Dr. Dalzell has a lung disability that reacts to perfume, cologne, scented lotion, body sprays, and any other scented products. In the presence of these products, Dr. Dalzell cannot breathe or speak.Because of this, students may not wear scented products in class or to any other face to face meeting with Dr. Dalzell. Please let Dr. Dalzell know if you have any questions!

What if I am sick?

We believe it is important that any students who are feeling ill do not come to class. Rest will speed your recovery, and help us protect other students in the classroom. If you need to miss class due to an illness, email Dr. Dalzell and Dr. Evans.

Note: Too much missed class will impact your participation score in this course, so if you need to miss multiple classes we will need to discuss a plan to make up the assignments.

Grading

Grading in this class is composed of 2 things - participation in class and participation in DataFest. The course will be graded on a pass/fail scale.To pass the course, you must:

(1) Fully participate in the course (which mean attending and participating in class activities)

(2) Submit your work on the activities at the end of each class to Canvas in PDF or html form. These will be graded on effort and completion rather than correctness. A good faith effort on all assignments is required to pass this course.

(3) Fully participate in the DataFest competition (which means attending, working through the data task, and presenting with your team). All participants in ASA DataFest agree to and must abide by the ASA Code of Conduct.

Note: Full participation in DataFest on April 4th - 6th is required to pass this course. If you are unable to attend, you need to drop the course. If some emergency/illness comes up that means you cannot attend DataFest, you must contact Dr. Dalzell or Dr. Evans immediately.

50% of your final grade will be DataFest participation and 50% of your grade will be the course activities

Anything I should know about sending emails?

We use a special system to help us answer your emails as fast as possible. When you email us, in the subject line of any email include STA 175 and brief description. Example: STA 175 Activity 1.

  • Email Dr. Dalzell: dalzelnm@wfu.edu
  • Email Dr. Evans: evansc@wfu.edu

Accessibility and Inclusion

Our goal is to create a space where everyone feels welcome and able to learn at their best. Please let Dr. Dalzell or Dr. Evans know if we can ever do anything to help structure the course to help foster your success. Below you fill see outlined a few structures for our course to create a supportive class atmosphere.

Foundations for our course

In this course, we will treat one another with respect and celebrate each individual. Wake Forest is a community of individuals that seeks the enlightenment and freedom which come through diligent study and learning. An even higher goal, however, is to give life to the University motto, Pro Humanitate, as the passion for knowledge is translated into compassionate service. Wake Forest fosters compassion and caring for others. Its collective strength and character are derived from the values and distinctive experiences of each individual; therefore, the richness of human intellect and culture is affirmed in its contribution to knowledge, faith, reason, and dialogue. Furthermore, Wake Forest strives toward a society in which good will, respect, and equality prevail.

In this class, we will embrace diversity of age, background, beliefs, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, neurotype, race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and other visible and non-visible categories. To that end, hatred, discrimination, and bigotry in any form will not be tolerated in this course. All members of this class are expected to contribute to a respectful, welcoming, and inclusive environment for every other member of the class.

Names

Names and methods of address are importance. To ensure that we address you properly, we ask that all students tell me your preferred name at the beginning of the semester, and let me know at any time if your preferred name changes. We will address one another using these preferred names during our class to make sure we are respectful of everyone’s preferences. Using the Name Coach feature in Canvas is particularly helpful to make sure we pronounce your preferred name correctly.

Accessibility Policy

We want you all to have the tools and techniques to succeed in this class! If there is something you need or something that would be useful to support your success in this course, please reach out and let me know. We always like to know how to help my students feel comfortable and successful in our course.

Wake Forest University provides reasonable accommodations to students with disabilities through the Center for Learning, Access, and Student Success (118 Reynolda Hall, 336-758-5929, class.wfu.edu). If you are in need of an accommodation, please contact CLASS as soon as possible.

As you all have already read, Dr. Dalzell had a lung disability the requires some accommodation from you (avoiding scents) so she knows what it is like to go through the accommodation process and ask professors for help. It can seem intimidating, but please please please reach out if you have accommodations. We can’t help you if we don’t know what you need!