Every year, the WiDS initiative organizes a kaggle competition to foster/promote learning, creativity and improving data science skills called WiDS datathon (https://www.widsconference.org/datathon.html). This year is no exception and our regional conference is organizing a series of events focused on collaboration called Puget Sound datathon studio.

The Datathon Studio is a series of virtual meetings where you would be able to join other competitors, interact with regional mentors and seasoned data science practitioners and learn about machine learning competitions. We encourage participation of people with all levels of expertise and desire to learn and show their machine learning approaches.

The series starts on Jan 20th and will finish a week before the datathon concludes (which is expected to end in mid-late February). After the event concludes we expect all participants to have at least one model ready for submission to the competition and an opportunity to showcase their work in the regional conference WiDS Puget Sound (https://www.widspugetsound.org/).

Details of the event:

How do I sign up?

Even though this series of events are organized by Data Circles in Seattle, everyone interested needs to register for the datathon with the WiDS@Stanford University here(https://airtable.com/shrLE1J7hVxuYAILv). Once you register there, you can just RSVP to our Meetup page for the Datathon Studio (to be created shortly) to receive information about the virtual meeting sites.

Is there any requirement to join?

It’s okay if you are new to the field, but you will get more out of these events if you have some experience using python or R to be able to load and clean the dataset.

Can I start exploring the data?

Absolutely! The data is available here (https://www.kaggle.com/c/widsdatathon2021/data) and you can start exploring the dataset anytime. The WiDS Datathon 2021 focuses on patient health, with an emphasis on the chronic condition of diabetes, through data from MIT’s GOSSIS (Global Open Source Severity of Illness Score) initiative (https://gossis.mit.edu/). Brought to you by the WiDS Worldwide team at Stanford, the West Big Data Innovation Hub, and the WiDS Datathon Committee, this year’s datathon is open until March 1, 2021.

Do I need a team to participate?

You can join the studio with a team already formed or you can come and let us team you up with other participants. If you prefer to work alone, you can also take this option.

If you want to be teamed up, please fill out this form:
https://forms.gle/qocpf64T26NhFrgJ7

Head over to Meetup to keep up to date on this event and get notifications and reminders!