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Center for Digital Transformation 10th Annual Deloitte March Data Crunch Madness Competition

THIS PAST SPRING, THE GABELLI SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Center for Digital Transformation (CDT) held the 10th Annual March Data Crunch Madness Competition. Designed to build upon the excitement of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) Division I men’s and women’s basketball championship tournaments, the CDT competition challenges student teams to employ their analytics skills to predict the outcome of the NCAA Basketball tournament using publicly available data. The competition is open to all Fordham University students, although most participants are enrolled in the Gabelli School of Business’s M.S. in Business Analytics and M.S. in Information Technology programs.

Members of Team JORDAN YEAR (left to right), Yujoon Jang, Jennifer McFadden, and Masaya Sugimoto, pose for a celebratory photo.

This year, the field was huge, with 19 teams starting the competition. After the initial screening, 10 teams were invited to participate in the final stage of the competition. After several weeks of intense number crunching and deep analysis, the finalists presented their work in an open forum on March 31, 2023. A panel of Gabelli School faculty members, alumni, and a representative from Deloitte—the sponsor of the competition—judged and ranked the teams based upon their analytics methods, tools, and presentations.

This year’s first-place winner was Team JORDAN YEAR, with each team member receiving a prize of $250. Second place went to Team LIVN, with each team member receiving a prize of $125. Third place went to Team MATHEMATICAL MADNESS, with each team member receiving a prize of $62.50.

Jie Ren, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the M.S. in Information Technology, who was a member of the judging panel, described the rigors of the competition and the reasons why Team JORDAN YEAR won. “The team demonstrated excellent data analytical techniques in data collection and preprocessing, selecting and testing models, and presenting their findings. Specifically, they focused on the inputs of Pythagorean Win Percentage, Distance from Home, and Team 1 & Team 2 Difference,” she noted. In addition to the deep analytics they conducted, the group also attended a basketball game and surveyed the audience to learn more about factors affecting a basketball team’s chances of winning.

—Paola Curcio-Kleinman

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