Students from the SU Faculty of Economic and Management Science's Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science came out tops in the data science challenge section of SU's second Hackathon which took place over the weekend.

The annual event, which ran from 2-4 August at SU's Engineering Main Building, was organised by Innovus and sponsored by Entersekt, Capitec and Explore.

The Hackathon aims to increase an entrepreneurial and innovation culture across the SU campus by getting talented student programmers, designers, builders, statisticians, scientists and engineers to come together to learn, build and share their creative ideas, while solving industry-relevant problems in an innovative fashion.

This year was the first time that students could participate in one of two challenges: a data science challenge or a financial technology (fintech) coding challenge.

The fintech challenge was sponsored and set up by Capitec and Entersekt, with help from the Departments of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the Department of Mathematical Sciences.

The data science challenge was sponsored and set up by Capitec and Explore with help from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science.

The theme of both challenges was to design useful and affordable products and services for consumers that are under-served and financially excluded.

The data science challenge required teams to use insights obtained from client transactional data, and to suggest the next best action or tip based on what the team had learnt from the data science or machine learning process.

The team consisting of David Rodwell, Christiaan le Roux and Robert Cronjé – all Financial Risk Management (FRM) Master's students in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science – came out tops. They were the most successful in using their creative problem solving, data cleaning, manipulation and visualisation skills, as well as their experience in statistical analysis.

Mr Carel van der Merwe, senior lecturer in FRM at the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, was ecstatic about the team's success.

“There were various teams from our department that took part, with the overall quality of the presentations very good. I am looking forward for our department to have an on-going presence and involvement in the competition," he said.

The students walked away with a sum of R15 000 for winning the challenge.

• Photo: The Hedge Back team consisting of (f.l.t.r.) Christiaan le Roux, David Rodwell and Robert Cronjé who won the data science challenge. With them is Mr August Carstens (far right), Data Science Manager at Capitec, one of the sponsors.