April 13, 2023
Meghan O’Toole
Student places third in national analytics competition
Rebecca Stoia ’24 won third place in the 2023 CarMax Analytics Showcase, an annual challenge for college students where the company presents real data and challenges students to interpret it.
This year, the US-based used car retailer presented students with a set of real company appraisal data and asked, “Many customers decide to trade in their vehicle when purchasing a vehicle at CarMax. What does a customer’s appraised vehicle tell us about the vehicle they will end up purchasing? How can CarMax use this information to improve business operation and provide customers a personalized shopping experience?”
Students were asked to submit a video presentation analyzing the data for the first round. Stoia was informed she was a finalist and was invited to a day-long virtual competion event where she worked with a coach who gave her feedback on her presentation and helped her network.
“The woman who was picking submissions told me that mine made it to that finals because it was especially statistical, which makes sense because of how many programs teach data science; they make it more about pulling out appealing conclusions and presenting visual data,” Stoia explained. “My approach was very mathematical, thanks to the skills I learned at Lake Forest College.”
Stoia heard of the competition thanks to Handshake, a platform used by the Gorter Family Career Advancement Center (CAC) to connect students to job and internship opportunities. The recognition came with a cash prize.
“A recruiter reached out to me through Handshake because she saw data science on my resume, and they encouraged me to participate in the challenge,” Stoia said.
The data science and economics double major was introduced to the College in 2020.
Her economics major includes a concentration in finance, and her data science major takes a concentration in computer science. She is currently interning with Kemper, an insurance company, and has found that her classes teach her foundational skills she can apply to her work.
“This experience gave me a sense of what employers want in candidates,” Stoia said. “As students, we’re given a broad catalog of courses to choose from, but I was able to use skills from just one course and apply them to this challenge, which reinforced for me what employers are looking for. I know I can continue to develop specific skills.”
Visual data analysis, statistical and hypothesis testing, and linear regression modeling were all skills Stoia applied to her presentation. Her analysis dealt with both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Stoia credited the course Math 250: Statistical Programming with teaching her the most relevant skills for this project.