Mentors

The primary goal of ASA DataFest at Kansas State University is to provide a rewarding experience for undergraduate students that sharpens their analytical skills and gives them confidence that they can take what they learn here and in the classroom out into the "real world". To help accomplish this, we seek Mentors from academia and industry to provide advice and guidance to student teams throughout the event.

Sign-Up

Industry representatives, K-State faculty and staff, and K-State graduate students are welcome to serve as Mentors who interact with and assist student teams by brainstorming and providing statistical, computational or application-specific guidance. Those wanting to serve a mentor should sign up for one or more shifts during the event.

Responsibilities

We will have small teams of roaming Mentors with different expertise and skillsets available throughout the event. As a Mentor, your most important job is to keep the mood light, encouraging, and collaborative!

During Friday evening, teams will be busy trying to make sense of the data. We expect that some might have technical problems getting started (e.g., loading and viewing the data, initial exploratory analysis, etc.). Throughout the weekend the teams will be largely on their own, but Mentors are encouraged to check-in with teams periodically.

Students will have questions and request advice. Sometimes, that requested advice could be highly technical and, depending on your background, outside your expertise. If so, see if you can steer them towards standard problem-solving techniques (e.g., break the problem into smaller pieces, go online for advice, etc.). Guide them to think about context. What sort of distribution do they expect? Why? What might cause that? How does that compare to what they saw?

This is a competition, but it is supposed to be friendly and collaborative, so don't worry about revealing any special knowledge. ASA DataFest at Kansas State University is not an exam, so if someone asks, please answer if you can, and don't worry about other teams overhearing. In fact, encourage teams to share technical advice with others on their own.

The Data

Students will not receive access to the dataset until Friday evening when an event official will introduce the dataset, outline the challenge, and introduce the Mentors who are present.

The outlined challenge may point to some specific questions that can be answered. However, Mentors should encourage the teams to think about the dataset in as large a context as possible, to seek helpful (and sometimes not obvious) insights, and to explore any interesting hypotheses they might generate.

Software

Most students will likely use R, but many will also rely on Matlab, Python, SAS, Excel, and ArcGIS Pro. If asked for help with any application or computing platform you’re not familiar with, simply stating so is sufficient. Other Mentors may be able to offer assistance.

Feedback

We hope that ASA DataFest at Kansas State University will become an annual event and perhaps expand to include other universities. With that in mind, please share your advice or constructive criticisms with the event organizers so that we can improve future events.