For the fifth year in a row, Oklahoma State University students have finished in the top three spots in the SAS National Data Mining Shootout. Though the exact rankings will not be revealed until the Analytics 2011 Conference Series on Oct. 24-25 in Orlando, Fla., it has been released that two of the top three teams came from OSU’s Spears School of Business.

The first top-ranking Spears School team consisted of full-time management information systems master’s students Satish Garla, Mahesh Nareddy and Murali Paglou; the second top-ranking team included distance-learning data mining students Michael Faron and Tony Ward.

A third OSU team will receive an honorable mention at the conference; it consisted of full-time MIS master’s students Yogen Shah and Manoj Inmadi. 

“I am extremely proud of our students and their achievements,” said Goutam Chakraborty, a professor of marketing for the Spears School, founder of the SAS and OSU Data Mining Certificate Program and coach for each of the data mining shootout teams. “Our students have performed consistently well at national competitions in winning awards and scholarships, and it is a great honor for them and our data mining certificate program.”

The SAS and OSU data mining certificate program is the largest data mining program in the United States. Though it only began in 2004, time after time the program has received national and international attention through the students’ achievements, Chakraborty said.

This is certainly another one of those times. Dozens of teams competed in the data mining shootout, where the teams were given a hypothetical, yet common business problem to solve using appropriate data mining methods and SAS software. Jerry Oglesby, the co-chair for the Analytics 2011 Conference Series and the director of higher education and global certification for SAS, said the data mining shootout allows students to demonstrate their expertise in data mining at the largest data mining conference in the world. The two top-placing OSU teams as well as the honorable mention OSU team will all receive recognition in front of the 1,000 attendees at the conference.

“This means a lot for me as a student planning a career in analytics,” Garla said. “I’m thankful to OSU’s data mining program where we are given the best support in achieving our goals. This wouldn’t have been possible without the guidance and encouragement of Dr. Chakraborty and our other professors.”

Chakraborty agreed, saying these honors are a testament to the quality of the students and the outstanding efforts of the varied faculty who instruct classes in the data mining certificate program.

“We have clearly built one of the most recognized and acclaimed data mining certificate programs in the nation,” Chakraborty said.

For more information about the data mining shootout, the Analytics 2011 Conference Series or the data mining certificate program at the Spears School, call Chakraborty at 405-744-7644 or send an email to goutam.chakraborty@okstate.edu.