Tableau and IMDA co-organise student data storytelling competition

SINGAPORE – October
12, 2016 – Tableau
Software (NYSE: DATA) today announced its partnership with the Infocomm Media
Development Authority (IMDA) in co-organising the National
Infocomm Competition (NIC) Face-off | Data Analytics Competition 2016. The NIC is the most prestigious and largest
network of ICT competitions in Singapore. It supports quality and impactful
competitions which seeks to deepen students’ engagement and ICT skills each
year.  Open to Secondary School and Junior College students in Singapore,
regardless of their data proficiency, this competition aims to improve data
analytics and visualisation skills and raise the level of interest in data storytelling.

Using public data sets from Tableau
Public, government websites and other sources, this competition invites
participants to create data-driven stories around the themes of “Sports”
“Science and Environment” or “City and Culture.” The students compete in groups
of three, working with support from their teachers.

Starting from Tableau-run, hands-on
workshops and initial submissions in June, the competition is now down to 10 shortlisted entries. Tableau has also been providing in-person
consultations to students who require additional help in putting together their
data visualisations.

“This has been an exhilarating
experience for our student participants. As an educator myself, I have been
encouraging the use of self-service data analytics tools in my classroom, as it
is an important skill that students of today will need to take with them into
university and their future careers, regardless of industry. This competition
has now given them a chance to have fun with data, create their own stories and
realise how meaningful data analytics and visualisation can truly be. It has
been exciting to see this through my evaluation of the results by the Junior
College participants,” said Dr. Koh Noi Sian, Lecturer, School of Information
Technology, Nanyang Polytechnic and one of the judges of the competition.

Education is at the core of
Tableau’s mission to help people see and understand their data. Tableau’s
academic programmesoffer free
licenses of Tableau Desktop for students and instructors, as well as special
education rates for school administrators to encourage the study and use of
data analytics in the classroom. Of the top 10 universities in Asia, according
to the US News & World Report, all of them have students or instructors signed up
for these programmes and include University of Tokyo in Japan, National
University of Singapore and Peking University in China.

JY Pook, Senior Vice President, Asia
Pacific, Tableau, commented: “Students have always been an important user group
for Tableau. Through this partnership with IMDA, we are able to empower the
participating students with data visualisation skills and provide them with the
tools that they need to excel. The students will find the experience invaluable
as data skills will increasingly prove to be a necessity for the workforce of
the future. We aim to continue to bring the art of data storytelling to
everyone who wants to work with data.”

Final winners of this competition will
be announced onsite at the upcoming Infocomm Media (ICM) Youth Fest 2016 in
November. For competition details and shortlisted entries, check out https://public.tableau.com/es-es/s/NIC-Face-off-Data-Analytics-Competition.