Update: UMN Data Viz Competition Winners Announced
Congratulations to the following winners of the UMN Data Viz Competition! We have student and faculty/staff winners from both the system campuses and the Twin Cities. As BTAA members, the Twin Cities winners will go on to represent the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus at the BTAA Data Viz Championship on Friday, February 14.
Student Category Winner, Twin Cities:
Exploring Seasonal and Yearly Trends in U.S. National Park Visits (1979–2023)
Author(s): Xiaohuan Zeng
This interactive data visualization showcases long-term and seasonal visitation trends for U.S. national parks, based on recreation visit data from 1979 to 2023. Users can explore annual patterns, compare park-specific trends, and analyze monthly visitation dynamics through interactive charts and a geographic heatmap. The tool provides insights into the popularity of national parks over time, the influence of geography on seasonal peaks, and opportunities to optimize park visits based on crowd levels and seasonal preferences.
Faculty/Staff Category Winner, Twin Cities:
UMN Brief Website Dashboard
Author(s): Eric Meyer and An Nguyen
The dashboard aims to monitor website traffic and user engagement for the University of Minnesota's weekly internal news digest, Brief. It helps track user interactions, measure content performance, and identify trends to optimize the digest’s reach and impact across all campuses.
Student Category Winner, System Campuses:
US National Park Visits
Author(s): Jannatul Adnin Eshita and Samiul Mushfik
This interactive data visualization provides an in-depth look at U.S. National Park visitation trends from 1979 to 2023, offering insights into over four decades of visit history. It highlights regional popularity, the most and least visited parks, and historical trends, allowing viewers to explore visits by park or state through an interactive map. Since 1979, visitation has increased by 74%, with a record number of visits in 2023, despite a sharp decline in 2020 due to the pandemic. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited, while Alaska's Kobuk Valley and Gates of the Arctic are the least visited. The Intermountain region, home to 19 parks, experienced dramatic growth in visitation over time, making it the most visited overall, while the Southeast region stands out for its steady trend and high average visits.
Faculty/Staff Category Winner, System Campuses:
Examining inequality in aquatic ecosystem services: Evidence from large-scale monitoring programs
Author(s): Katya Kovalenko, Sergey Ilyushkin, Holly Wellard Kelly, Justine Neville, Glenn Guntenspergen
Minority communities were under-represented in the monitoring programs. Equitable representation in monitoring programs is crucial for documenting and addressing potential inequalities.
The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) has launched a Data Viz Championship to celebrate International Love Data Week and showcase data visualization talents of students, faculty, and staff. The University of Minnesota is participating in the Data Viz Championship and hosting an internal competition that is open to undergraduate and graduate/professional students, faculty, and staff from all campuses. The system campuses and the Twin Cities campus will have their own opportunity at prizes. All entries will be judged and the top visualizations will be featured during Love Data Week. In addition, the top visualizations from UMN-TC, which is a BTAA member, will move on to the BTAA Data Viz Championship.
Requirements For Students:
The challenge is to use the U.S. National Park Visit Data (1979-2023), to devise a data visualization to address the question(s) of your choice.
- The U.S. National Park Visit Data (1979-2023) must be used, but additional data can also be used to supplement should students opt to do so
- Visualizations must be accessible via a link that requires no login at the time of the Challenge voting and judging
- Some sample research questions below, but you don’t have to be limited by them
- Students can collaborate together and all contributors must be credited; one person should be identified as the primary presenter
- Have fun and be creative!
Potential research questions:
- What are the most popular parks to visit, over time?
- What is the average number of visits by National Park, or by State?
- Which National Park has the most and least average visits? What patterns or surprises do you notice?
Requirements For Faculty and Staff:
Submit a visualization using the theme of the Big Ten (i.e., athletics, enrollment data, etc.). You can also submit an existing visualization used at your institution. Visualizations can pertain to the institution as a whole or to a specific initiative or population. Submissions should follow institutional data policies. If you are looking for some interesting data sets we have some here, and we also have prompts to help with your visualization here.
- All submissions must follow institutional data policies and guidelines
- Visualizations must be accessible via a link that requires no login at the time of the Challenge voting
- Faculty and staff can collaborate together and all contributors must be credited; one person should be identified as the primary presenter
How to Submit Visualizations
Please submit your Data Viz entries here. The deadline to submit visualizations is January 20, 2025.