DATA MINING CUP 2019: Students from Iowa win in anniversary year

prudsys AG crowned the winners of this year’s DATA MINING CUP (DMC for short) at their retail intelligence summit on July 3 2019 in Berlin. It was a team of students from Iowa State University that took the top spot on the podium. An individual competitor from Geneva was delighted to take second place. And a group of female students from Washington exerted their “womanpower” to capture third place.

The day after the awards ceremony for this year’s DATA MINING CUP, the DMC trophy will start on a long journey. Along with a check for 2,000 euros the proud prize winners head back to Ames in the US state of Iowa. With a clear lead on points, the students prevailed against 148 teams from 28 countries at the 20th DATA MINING CUP on the subject of fraud detection. In addition to Switzerland’s University of Geneva (2nd) and George Washington University (3rd place), the following institutions were among the best: Anhalt University of Applied Sciences (4th and 7th place), Chemnitz University of Technology (5th place), Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (6th place), Iowa State University (8th place), Perm National Research Polytechnic University (9th place) and the University of Mannheim (10th place).

prudsys AG has been calling on students from all over the world to test their classroom knowledge in the form of a practical data mining task since the year 2000. In this 20th edition, participants had a maximum of six weeks to come up with a mathematical model to detect cases of fraud at self-checkouts in grocery stores without putting innocent customers through unnecessary inspections.

The ten best teams were invited to present their solutions at the retail intelligence summit in Berlin on July 3. With the motto “Smart Decisions for Smart Retail” the one-day conference was all about how retailers can use artificial intelligence to be successful. The approximately 150 participants from both bricks and mortar and online businesses were able to gain exciting insights and benefit from authentic applications related to personalization and intelligent pricing. The traditional DATA MINING CUP awards ceremony took place during the evening event. In addition to the DMC trophies, the three winning teams can look forward to prize money of 500 to 2,000 euros.