Elliot’s Big Data Out At McLaren, with Alteryx
Elliot’s Words…
Alteryx in partnership with McLaren just launched the first ever Datathon, an amazing competition involving real car data in the McLaren factory. Luckily, I was one of the 20 finalists to go and compete on the day after coming top 20 in the escape room virtual challenge which involved a range of Alteryx tools in a race against the clock to find the engine thief hidden inside a set of data.
The day started with a talk from Edward Green the Head of Commercial Technology who overseas Formula One, extreme E, IndyCar, and E-sports. In a single race weekend, they collect 1.5 terabytes of data and over the last year collected 11.8 billion data points from 300 data points on one Formula One car alone. This is all processed within Alteryx!! They can even use data straight from F1 simulators and the Formula One games to predict and create accurate models.
After this I competed in the first round of competition we had four tasks with two hours to complete with two laptops and 4 teammates.
Included a range of data analytics skills from data prep and blend to spatial data and date time data.
The tasks I attempted were two and four:
Task two involved using lap time data and weather data for the 17th round of the 2022 championship to find relevant information about performance.
Task four involved the 2021 Italian Grand Prix telemetry data where we had to find pit stop times and distance last due to pit stop times for both Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris from real car telemetry. All of this we had to deliver in a 10-minute presentation as a team where the top three teams moved on to the grand final.
Unfortunately, this is where my journey ended, however, we were still able to watch an exciting final on the stage where they had to use car tyre data to solve 4 problems as fast as possible. The runners up prizes being presented by the co-founder of Alteryx, Olivia Adams, still being presented by the CEO of McLaren Zac brown.
This competition highlights the amazing opportunities with Alteryx interesting career paths available.
