From May 12 to 14th, the first Hackathon of population census data in Latvia was held online as a part of the University’s of Latvia project Innovation Grants for Students of the University of Latvia and in cooperation with the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB).
Today, on May 28th, the Central Statistical Bureau has awarded the special prize to a team represented by students of the BA School of Business and Finance for their idea on an alternative census. The proposition of the BA School of Business and Finance students is a statistical model – A “VERIFICATION OF ACTUAL PLACE OF RESIDENCE.”
The award to the BA School of Business and Finance student team is a Premium subscription of brilliant.org platform for one year where you can take courses in math, physics, quantitative finance and computer science.
The goal of LU and CSP hackathon was to find new and innovative solutions to the challenges identified during the 2021 census. There were 11 teams assigned to work in two categories – Population, Education and Housing. Each team had its own challenge the teams worked hard on and searched for the solutions along with mentors. Anyone – students or someone who is interested in the topic were invited to participate in the hackahton.
BA School of Business and Finance in the hackathon was represented by 7 students:
Darja Goloburda, Marika Tiščenko, Milana Žavoronkova, Ansis Avotiņš, Māra Strokša, Raivis Jonaitis and Ričards Grišāns.
After the presentations in mid-May, the hackathon jury chose its sympathies in each category. In the “Citizens, Education” category the awards recieved two teams including students from BA School of Business and Finance:
The 2nd place and the EUR 800 cash prize was awarded to a team represented by the BA School of Business and Finance students Māra Štroksa and Ansis Avotiņš, who sought to answer the challenge: Internal migration: whether the internal migration of the population is real or fictitious, caused by the search for good regulation (declaring near schools and nursery schools in the vicinity of Covid, for the sake of celebrating the festival together, more favourable due to real estate tax);
The 3rd place and the EUR 600 cash prize was awarded to a team represented by the the BA School of Business and Finance student Raivis Jonaitis, who worked on a solution to the challenge Residence of the People: Is the person’s declared place of residence its actual place of residence? Where do Latvia’s independent residents actually live? In cities, in the countryside, maybe mostly in Riga? Where are the residences of people who haven’t been declared anywhere?
Coordinator of BA School of Business and Finance curriculum and a student of “Business Process Management” Māra Strokša on participation in the hackathon:
I used the opportunity to apply for this hakcathon for two reasons:
– first of all, when I read the description of the hakcathon I though – why not use this opportunity to look at what is the statistical data and what can be learned more by combining these statistics?
– secondly, motivation the BA School of Business and Finance gives is that knowledge needs to be tested in practice, for example, in various interdisciplinary activities. So I could say that part of the motivation was to check what I’ve learned, and whether it’s all useful in this kind of hakcathon .
The positive side of the hakcathon was not only the location – online, which allowed participation in the event regardless of location, but also the available CSB data, the guest lectures that helped to understand more – how statistics are developed and how to analyse it. An indispensable assistant in the whole process was the support of mentors. As my greatest benefit, I appreciate not only more insight into what we can obtain from different data, but also working with the people I met for the first time in my life, and improving our comuncation and presentations skills.
More information about the hackathon here: https://www.alternativatautasskaitisana.lv/