Who doesn’t love a good hackathon? In March 2022, LexisNexis sponsored a Nexis® Data Lab Hackathon as part of the Big Data & Analytics Association (BDAA) and Translational Data Analytics Institute (TDAI) Spring Forum.
We asked participants at Ohio State University – where the forum was held – to put Nexis Data Lab to the test. And they wasted no time getting to work, using the unique datasets accessible in Data Lab to prove or disprove a wide variety of intriguing hypotheses. Doing so involved some rather creative thinking on their part, along with the intuitive functionality available in Data Lab.
Of course, we took note of how hackathon participants utilized Data Lab to come up with their insights. Along the way, we discovered that:
- Nexis Data Lab does in fact provide an efficient and powerful solution for unlocking data-driven conclusions
- Participants gained access to Data Lab and thoroughly tested their hypotheses using award-winning LexisNexis content with ease
During the hackathon, participants took full advantage of Data Lab’s Jupyter notebook environment; they quickly compiled evidence for their arguments using samples in Jupyter notebooks and visualized data for fast insight.
When the dust settled, hackathon participants had emerged as the victors. Using Data Lab, they tested whether media had become more polarized in recent years. To do so they:
- Measured the use of polarizing words in the media and performed an assessment via LexisNexis news content
- Leveraged subject metadata provided by our LexisNexis Smart Indexing Technology™ to support for their hypothesis
Backed by compelling data, they concluded that the media has in fact not become more polarized. What’s amazing is the fact that they tested their hypothesis without even knowing Python!
We gathered great feedback during the hackathon, along with additional notes from interviews after the hackathon’s conclusion. Now we better understand how people use Nexis Data Lab, what they value most from using it, and what potential improvements we can make to better support data sampling and downloading needs. All in all, the Nexis Data Lab Hackathon was a smashing success!
Learn more about Nexis Data Lab here.