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Are you someone who is looking into gaining firsthand skills for their career path but does not know what to do or to choose?

Well we have something for you

 

 

 

What is Data Science???

Data science is the use of machine learning to solve problems where we use math and simple methods to solve them.

  • Why choose being a detective of numbers
  • Well for one you will have fun with people who match your energy and level of understanding.
  • It will also give you the necessary skills to work as a data scientist where you will gain firsthand experience from the best in wits and nationally.
  • It will also open more opportunities for you to get the chance to collaborate with people from large corporations.
  • It will increase your strength and mental ability in cognitive thinking.
  • Goals of the group
  • We want more students to be exposed to data science as this is a once in a lifetime chance mainly because on a normal basis one would obtain the skills of a data scientist at post graduate level at the fair minimum.
  • For students to learn more about data science and what it is and why do we need more people in the field
  • We also want to prepare intellectual and strong teams for competition which rank up to and not limited to national level.
  • And for people to come and have fun with us in our interest group where they will get the most out of it
  • Competitions
  • On a yearly basis there are two competitions, most of them being DIRISA and the IBMZ
  • We compete on a yearly basis where we win most of the time.
  • Both DIRISA and IBM are datathons where we select six team members after a series of qualification tests where whoever gets good marks on the selection round gets to join
  • We take two of the six to be our researchers where they hunt data for the other 4 to use in tackling the problem.
  • So, we get data sets and a theme where we must use the given data set and any added data, we can dig up to come up with a model for the given theme.
  • Skills
  • You gain skills in using Linux 1 as an operating system commonly used in with for computer science labs and tutorials.
  • You gain skills in data mining and get to learn of which strategies to use when mining for data.
  • You gain skills in knowing how to tackle problems in the field.
  • You also get to learn machine learning and more about AI. Yayy is not that exciting.
  • How is the experience of going to competitions?
  • You get to travel for free.
  • Meeting and communicating with people have the same or even higher IQ.
  • Get to socialize such that you get new skills from different people as to how they do their thing.
  • Build a formidable team with total strangers who are going to be your friends for the rest of your days.
  • Training is incredibly fun, and the weekly sessions are very engaging and bring the most out of you.
  • Challenges
  • Like every normal group of people there must be challenges that you go through and as much as we are the best that title did not come easy
  • The reason for that is that for starters finding data is hard and it requires patience and thorough evaluation.
  • It is like a scavenger hunt for data where you go hunting with a keyboard and a mouse instead of a shield and a sword.
  • But for every challenge there is a solution. After all we are doing this to solve problems so as a team there is nothing we cannot do
  • There is no I in team.
  • Projects
  • Our current project that is up and running is the datathon event tech for good where we were given the opportunity to do anything as a project.
  • We chose crime prevention as it has been one of south Africa’s tremendous problems.
  • We currently have software that detects voice projections and their level of intensity such that if they reach a certain level of frequency and decibels the systems trigger and contacts a tactical unit to attend the hostile situation.
  • Who joins, how and why?
  • Students from the engineering faculty, math’s sector, computer science at most and statistics students
  • Your year of study does not necessarily restrict you from joining because we take from 1st up to postgraduates.
  • And the how part is simple just come to the Math’s Science Laboratories every Wednesday during lunchtime from 13h15 till 14h15
  • This basically gets you an advantage in terms of the job industry where you will be better off than those who still must start over and learn DS.

 

 

Competitions:

  • Team name: Data wizards
  • Position: third place
  • Year: 2023
  • Competition name: DIRISA Students Datathon technical challenge 

Members:

  • Claire Stewart
  • MoreBlessing Semela
  • Oneilwe Seleke
  • Palesa Rapolaki
  • Research:
    • Muhammed Bangie
    • Mahdiyyah Jhetam    
  • Mentor: Lungile Mngonyama                                                                                                                                                      

 

 Team name: Byte Busters

  • Position: first place
  • Year: 2024
  • Competition name: DIRISA Students Datathon technical challenge

Members:

  • JoasPaul
  • Mixo Khoza
  • Tamara Zelenyuk
  • Goitseona Sono
  • Research 
    • Karen Chetty
    • Amarachukwu Onwenu
  • Mentor: Lungile Mngonyama  

 

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