Gather your teams and get your analytics and data science tools, skills, and mindsets ready! TAG Data Challenge 2025 starts January and runs through March 28, 2025.
Pathways2Life (P2L) in collaboration with Technology Association of Georgia’s TAG Data Challenge 2025 (formerly Master Modeler Competition), aims to conduct a multi-disciplinary competition with volunteers from academia and practitioners focused on leveraging data, analytics, data science, and AI to get to the answers and find ways to reduce the odds of underage drinking and early alcohol abuse.
P2L’s goal, “Rethinking Prevention… from the family room to the classroom and beyond,” is hindered by societal pressures, logistical details surrounding alcohol access, and the application of technology for consumer products.
More about P2L follows:
Vision:
Cultivating Meaningful Connections with Students, Parents, and Stakeholders to Build Strong Communities.
Mission:
Our mission is to place people of understanding to deliver individual and environmental prevention strategies throughout our communities to protect teenagers as they move through the “Transition Zone” (the ages of 13-20) while unearthing their full potential. This will directly impact the quality of our communities for the better.
Description of Challenge / Problem to Solve
Join us in the fight to educate the public, impact policymakers, and reduce access of alcohol to teenagers and younger individuals. This project seeks to analyze data related to third-party delivery service offerings and the relationship with retailers allowing for the sale of alcoholic beverages without checking for identification.
Pathways2Life in collaboration with Technology Association of Georgia’s TAG Data Challenge 2025 (formerly Master Modeler Competition), aims to conduct a multi-disciplinary competition with volunteers from academia and practitioners focused on leveraging data, analytics, data science, and AI to get to the answers and find ways to reduce the odds of underage drinking and early alcohol abuse.
The challenge includes augmenting a core dataset as provided by the competition administrators, and analyzing applicable data to determine the following:
1) availability of applicable datasets relevant to this issue in the USA
2) extent of alcohol delivery occurrences
3) insights to gain deeper understanding such as:
a. types of geographies, consumers, households most / least likely to participate in underage alcohol purchasing patterns with third parties
b. relationships, if any, with other substances and their purchases through similar third-party services, such as nicotine, THC, and marijuana where applicable
c. time-related patterns associated with this issue, and potential future trends
Results are expected to help P2L and other interested nonprofit partners in their quest to reduce access to alcohol and other substances to vulnerable populations.
Competition Details
Teams:
Teams may include individuals from academia, corporate, consulting, or other practitioners, and combinations by group are also permitted.
Phase 1: Using the description of the challenge / problem to solve from this competition, teams must submit a single, open-source, custom designed video per team up to 10 minutes in length outlining their Proposed Approach for working on this challenge. All team members and the team name should be listed on the opening slide of the proposed approach. Submissions are made by sending a single email message per team with the link to the video in the body of the message. Submissions should go to: Jamarius@tagonline.org and Jessica@tagonline.org, with the subject heading, “TAG Data Challenge 2025 – Round 1 submission,” by the deadline shown.
Phase 2: Leveraging the problem statement, the provided data, and augmented data of each team’s choosing (must be open source), plus content from a conference call with the nonprofit organization addressing the finalist teams, teams are responsible for analyzing the data to answer the challenge / problem and ultimately help P2L with their goals. Final submissions should go to: Jamarius@tagonline.org and Jessica@tagonline.org, with the subject heading, “TAG Data Challenge 2025 – FINAL submission,” by the deadline shown. All teams are required to present during the final presentation in person with at least one team member physically present.
Prizes
INFORMS Analytics Society is sponsoring the following prizes:
- Prize Money –
- First place: $3,000 for the team
- Runner up: $1,000 for the team
- Speaking Spot at INFORMS–
- Winning teams (first and second place) earn speaking spots at 2025 INFORMS Analytics+ Conference
- Travel, registration, and other expenses will have to be covered by the winning teams or their sponsors
- Social Media Posts –
- Mention by Technology Association of Georgia’s Data Science & AI Society on social media
Data
Required data to leverage for the finalist round of the competition will originate from the following sources:
1) Survey perspectives and information related to the use of third-party delivery services to deliver alcohol without proper verification of identification contributing to underage drinking. The data will be used to support the mission of Pathways2Life to fight addiction by delivering individual and environmental prevention strategies throughout our communities to protect teenagers as they move through the “Transition Zone” (the ages of 13-20) while unearthing their full potential. This will directly impact the quality of our communities for the better.
2) Finalist Teams can and should add additional open source, publicly available data to augment their analysis to help improve their model and more fully answer the community / business question and provide meaningful results to the data sponsor.
Additional details will be provided via email to finalist teams.
Assessment Rubric and Judges
Teams for both Round 1 – Proposed Approach, and Round 2 – Finalists will receive assessment from judges with expertise in analytics, data, data science, and the subject matter expertise including addiction and recovery. The assessment rubric includes (but is not limited to) the following dimensions:
|
|
Framework and Ethical Standards
Competitors are required to adhere to the Code of Ethics as outlined by INFORMS Certified Analytics Professional designation:
https://www.certifiedanalytics.org/code-of-ethics
Also, teams are expected to follow the INFORMS Certified Analytics Professional framework / domains toward solving the community / business problem:
https://www.certifiedanalytics.org/cap
While application of the model in a practical environment is not possible during this competition, teams should discuss how this would work and methods for operationalizing their model to help the organization and support decision-making.
Key Dates
- January 13, 2025: Registration available – competition kick off
- February 10, 2025: Submissions for Round 1 – Proposed Approach due by midnight
- February 17, 2025: Finalist teams announced via email
- February 19, 2025, Time TBD: Data walk through with nonprofit sponsor, review of community / business questions to solve, data access provided
- March 27, 2025: Submissions for Finalist Round – Final Results due by midnight via email
- March 28, 2025: Final presentations in person in Atlanta, location TBD, approximate time 10 AM – 3 PM
Teams
All competitor teams must remain the same from Phase 1 to Phase 2. Team size must be between 2 and 4 members, and all members must work from USA and leverage domestic resources open to their use. Competitors can come from academia, practitioners, consultants, or others. If you need help finding team members, you may send an email message to jamarius@tagonline.org with the subject line: “NEED TEAM – TAG Data Challenge 2025” by January 31 at 12 PM. Your email when then get shared with others looking for team members and you can choose teams from there based on schedules, personal objectives, and skills.
Communication Channel
The official communication channel throughout the competition will include email addresses provided during the submission process for teams and individuals, and the following TAG Data Science & Analytics Society page for other announcements, details, and general communication.
Register for the competition by filling out this form:
Sponsors
