RSM Announces Winners of the 2021 Data Mining Competition

RSM Announces Winners of the 2021 Data Mining Competition

CHICAGO – (April 18, 2022) – RSM US LLP (“RSM”) – the nation’s leading provider of audit, tax and consulting services focused on the middle market – announced the winners of its Data Mining Competition, an innovation competition in which teams of RSM professionals use data analytics skills to build dashboard visualizations of the current U.S. housing market.

At the start of the competition, 26 teams made up of 128 RSM participants from across the country and in Canada embarked on a journey to enhance their data mining and visualization skills. The teams competed for an exclusive opportunity to partner with RSM’s real estate senior analysts to produce an article to be published on the RSM website that incorporates the winning team’s dashboard findings, as well as for $6,000 to donate to their local Habitat for Humanity chapters.

Five finalist teams presented their real estate-themed dashboards to a panel of RSM judges, fellow competitors and data lovers across the firm. Finalists showcased their interactive dashboards to answer two of the most common questions about the U.S. housing market: Should someone rent or buy? Where are the most appealing locations to rent or buy?

This year’s Data Mining Competition winners are RSM’s Dylan Bingham, Fiona Lo, Ian Kaminksy and Michael Williams of “The Outliers” team.

“One of the great things about the dashboards that we observed was that there is no one right answer,” said Andrew Murphy, program lead and innovation research manger with RSM’s Acceleration Center for Innovation. “We saw a wide variety of dashboards and answers to these questions during our finalist presentations. Teams did an impressive job taking fairly simple questions and using their creativity and data analysis to tell some really unique stories. We saw extremely creative uses of Power BI that allowed end users to interact with the data to help guide them to a suggested rent or buy decision and location.”

A panel of qualified judges reviewed each finalist’s presentation and scored them based on three criteria: creativity of presentation; clarity of presentation; and demonstration of methodology, data sources, outcomes and lessons learned. RSM’s people were also able to vote for their favorite presentation, which counted towards the final score.

“I was amazed by the presentations the teams were able to pull together with minimal real estate background,” said Stuart Taub, national real estate leader with RSM US LLP and co-executive sponsor of RSM’s Data Mining Competition. “The insights that teams were able to derive by looking at trends in mortgage rates, construction, cost of living, climate, unemployment and average annual income rates, and then incorporate into their dashboards, was impressive and underscores RSM’s core value of excellence. The future of our firm is in good hands.”

To learn more about RSM’s innovation efforts, please visit our website.