Colorado School of Mines team wins analytics challenge

The teams were provided with data from the Denver Police Department.
The teams were provided with data from the Denver Police Department. | File photo

Eight students from the Colorado School of Mines recently won first place in the University of Denver's Analytics Challenge, which focused on the teams' abilities to analyze information about crime across Denver in the past five years.

The teams were provided with data from the Denver Police Department, which they looked at from three perspectives: a social control theory, an optimization model and a statistical approach. The first approach centered around crime prevention, while the second looked into the location of crimes and the placement of officers in the hopes of preventing crime. Finally, the third approach examined what the team called a spatial dissonance of where the crimes were occurring.

The team was able to analyze the data and use its findings to provide suggestions to the police that would aid in the effectiveness of department.

The team of Taylor Chott, Colin Eberl-Coe, Margaret Golz, Kownoon Her, Keshini Keane, Melinda Krebs, Ashwin Mathur, Oluwaseun Ogunmodede, Ryan Thorpe and Ke Xiao received $2,500 with their prize.