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AMBS students to enter international Business Analytics competition

A group of four, second-year undergraduate students from Alliance MBS are taking part in the Business Analytics Competition at Manhattan College (BAC@MC) later this month.

Hosted annually by The O'Malley School of Business, the BAC@MC, will be delivered virtually this year, enabling AMBS students to participate in the competition for the first time. The event, taking place from 30th April - 1st May, also features a line-up of keynote speeches from inspiring, distinguished speakers, in addition to the student competition.

The two-round competition gives students an exciting opportunity to test their knowledge and hone their business analytics skills. They also have the chance of winning $2,000, $1,000 and $500 prizes.

Competing teams of 2-4 students from across the world will engage in the science of decision-making as well as practice their ability to draw business insight from a comprehensive analysis of relevant data.

The AMBS team are: Riccardo Albertini, studying BSc International Management, and Rhea Poonevala, Connor Smith and Arish Tripathi (all BSc IT Management for Business students). They are busy preparing their submission, under the mentorship of AMBS academics Professor Julia Handl, Dr Yu-wang Chen and Chimdimma Onah.

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Professor Julia Handl commented: “This is a really exciting opportunity to put data analytical skills in practice. It’s been immensely rewarding to see the passion and technical skills of our final four contestants, and I am looking forward to seeing them perform at the competition.”

The opportunity to compete for a place to represent AMBS was offered to all students on the Semester 1 "Business Data Analytics" unit, run by Professor Handl and Dr Chen. BSc IT Management for Business first-year “Fundamentals of Data Analytics” unit - taught by Professor Handl and Dr Tahir Abbas Syed, has further equipped the students with the skills they need to take part.

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Working on the project, Arish shared his thoughts: "I believe data is the most valuable resource - one who has and controls all the data is none less than a god."

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Explaining why he wanted to take part, Riccardo said: “My enthusiasm for Data Analytics stems from the curiosity to analyse data through various techniques for the creation of models that can help us make an informed decision in the future.”

To be selected to represent AMBS, students were given the competition brief and had a few weeks to start exploring the data and come up with an analytical plan. Rhea, Connor, Arish and Riccardo produced impressive plans and will represent the School as a team.

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Rhea is looking forward to the competition, "this is an exciting opportunity to work as part of a team and test my knowledge in Business Analytics."

Both rounds of this year’s challenge will require the teams to analyse and extract business insight from a competition-specific dataset. The data analysis is based on two highly topical datasets: New York socioeconomic data and Covid-19 data. Students will investigate and explore the links between the two. In round one, the team will submit a poster and a video summarising their analysis and answering questions from the judges. If they make it through to round two, they will present and develop their findings further to be judged by a varied panel of practitioners, brought together from different industries who value business analytics.

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Connor shared his enthusiasm for this year’s brief: “It’s amazing to have had the opportunity to draw insight and help aid future decision making with regards to COVID-19 policy. I’ve always had a passion for data analytics, and now my passion has been put to good use.”

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