The Wharton High School Data Science Competition is a free, experiential sports analytics competition from the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative, supported by the Wharton Global Youth Program. It delivers valuable data, analytics and team-building experience.
Last year, teams of high school students from around the world who participated in the competition pilot crunched simulated soccer sports league statistics to make informed win-loss predictions about the league playoffs. The data competition saw teams of three-to-five students competing to make predictions about the playoff outcomes of the North American Soccer League – a synthetic professional women’s league, with 30 teams and a treasure trove of sports analytics data points and variables.
2023-2024 Data Science Competition by the Numbers
About the Competition
The Wharton High School Data Science Competition is a free, two-month opportunity for students to learn team dynamics and problem-solving through sports analytics.
Building on the success of the first competition, the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative is developing a new challenge that will use comprehensive data from a simulated professional sports league.
Participants will have access to a complete regular season of game-level results, including various summary game statistics. Based on the regular season team performance, students will predict the results of playoff games in both the Group Stage and the Knockout Stage. Teams will use that data to predict match outcomes during the playoffs.
Why Join the Competition?
Participating in the Wharton High School Data Science Competition is a fantastic way to develop your data analysis and prediction skills through the lens of sports, all while having fun with your friends. You can apply the experience and problem-solving skills you develop through this competition to your everyday life outside of sports analytics.
- Develop highly marketable skills through hands-on experience with the latest statistical tools and programming languages in data analytics.
- The data you analyze closely resembles the same data that major sports teams use across the world. Get a head start on working with advanced sports data.
- Much like a real sports team, work with your peers to effectively delegate tasks and optimize individual skill sets to achieve a common goal.
Registration for the Data Science Competition will open in January 2025. Complete the form below and never miss an update.
For more information, visit the official competition website. Questions? data-comp@wharton.upenn.edu