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Icon has announced that it is piloting a ‘Big Data Challenge’ with the University of Malta’s Faculty of Mathematics.

Through this collaboration, Icon is offering students an opportunity to analyse multi-structured data and transform complex information into valuable business insights.

Students, who will be supervised by Icon’s team, will be provided with eight years of anonymised sales data: over 15 million records. Participants will be expected to convert this data into meaningful information while identifying key trends including seasonality, demographic changes, impact of international news headlines on sales, sales pace and much more.

This initiative will put students in the driving seat and provide an excellent space for innovation and close cooperation with enterprise. Students will also be required to reflect on the project outcomes and present these to Icon and the Faculty of Mathematics.

Participants will work in groups and will have access to data analysts and technology mentors at Icon. This formula is intended to stimulate teamwork among participants as well insights into gaps in the market that can be filled with innovative technology solutions and analysis.

This project has been organised in line with Icon’s philosophy that students should be given real life opportunities to better transition into the working world. Students will gain invaluable first-hand work experience in the digital industry as well as a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to work with a leading Maltese technology firm while still at University. Project outcomes will be recorded in the students’ official University transcripts.

Icon selected big data as a theme for this assignment since it represents one of the greatest challenges that businesses are facing today. Companies are often buried in information that is fragmented horizontally across business units or even outside company ‘boundaries’.

Making this information unambiguous and turning it into a useful asset is the key to transforming a company and increasing its agility.

Commenting on the initiative, Gege Gatt, director of Icon, stated: “I firmly believe that today’s complex, fast-changing business challenges require an interdisciplinary approach and Icon is more than glad to bring on young computer scientists, mathematicians and statistical researchers from the University of Malta to look into real-world business problems.”

This article was originally published on www.timesofmalta.com and can be viewed in full

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