2756

participants from 83 countries have registered for the International Data Analysis Olympiad (IDAO). Most registrations came from Russia and India. The top ten most represented countries among participants also include the United States, Iran, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Pakistan.

Now, the participants will need to form teams for the online round—starting this year only groups of two or more people are allowed to compete.

‘Previously, teams consisting of one person performed well and even won prizes. But we believe that the IDAO presents a perfect opportunity to develop not only hard skills through problem solving, but also soft skills through teamwork. In addition, the change in the rules has prompted people from different countries, universities, and organizations to get acquainted and form teams,’ says Sergey Karapetyan, manager of Faculty of Computer Science and one of the IDAO organizers.

Teamwork is a very valuable skill for future work in the industry

Almost half of the participants—1,141 people—indicated that they are undergraduate students, and 941 participants said they work in IT. 570 participants hold Master's degrees and 100 participants hold PhDs. According to Sergey Karapetyan, competitions of this type are most interesting for those who are just starting out in data science since the Olympiad is an excellent opportunity to gain experience in solving industrial or scientific tasks.

During the online round, the teams should build a model that predicts the position of space objects. The task was taken from practices of the Astronomical Research Center and adapted for the Olympiad by the HSE Laboratory of Methods for Big Data Analysis. Calculating the exact position of satellites in orbit helps scientists prevent collisions. Participants compete in conditions similar to those of real life with tight deadlines, capacity limitations, and teamwork.