Village Data Quest is a competition hosted by Village Software Engineering Ltd to engage students from across North West to work in teams to solve a business intelligence related puzzle. It is a chance to to demonstrate and sharpen your problem solving and programming skills.
You'll have the opportunity to meet and connect with developers from Village and other universities.
If you win, you will be a winner and can tell future employers so at interviews. Your mother would also be proud. We’re also always on the lookout for talent for our BI practice. We'll even throw in a Rasbperry Pi Pico Starter Kit for the top three teams, one for each contestant, and a drone for the top team.
A team of two find themselves in a strange land, fighting to find the most valuable packages of land to claim before the other teams do.
You are presented with a 1000 x 1000 csv grid, representing a type of resource found in the land. Each cell will have a value from 0 to 100 for each resource, each resource has a value.
Your main objective is to find and claim 5 of the most prosperous 10 x 10 pieces you can on the grid. Claiming a grid happens on a first come, first served basis. Once you have claimed a piece of land, no one else can claim any cells in it.
The contest will be held at Village Software's office in Liverpool city centre.
We have created a data mining puzzle and we welcome any students from local and less-local universities to come and a have a go at solving it. There will be three rewards.
You only need your laptop. We will provide everything else you need to participate. You can apply as a team of 2, or on your own and we will assign you a team mate.
You will have to use a tool, you can use any technologies or tools you feel comfortable with for example Excel, Mathlab, Python, R, C#, Java.
There will be three categories of awards:
The team with the most prosperous land slot will be crowned rulers. Reserving a land slot happens on a first come first served basis.
The team that presents their method and findings on the most persuasive infographic, graph type thing, will win an award.
An award for general brilliance and innovation.
The contest will be held on Friday 05.05.2023
10:00 Arrival
10:15 Briefing
10:30 Start prototyping
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Competition data given out
15:00 Preparing results
16:00 Presentations
16:40 Judges gather
17:00 Award ceremony
17:20 Drinks reception downstairs (Tempest at Tithebarn)
We welcome current students from any university, local or not, in teams of two people. You need to be able to use some technology to absorb a million points of data, so some kind of command of a data processing tool is required. You might do computer science or maths, but if you are a numerically feisty Latin scholar have a go, it is all about competence.
Worry not! We will put solo competitors with a team mate on the contest day.
Village's office is located on Tithebarn Street in the Tempest Building, a very short walk from Moorfields train station. We’ll be letting you know more.
No. We will send out some more details to accepted competitors. On the day there will be a test set of data, followed by a competition set.
The competition will take all day, so Village will provide lunch and snacks on the contest day.
You can win a drone, Rasberry Pi Pico Starter Kit, glory, and CV fodder. Nice!
Village's offices are located in the 3rd floor of the Tempest Building on Tithebarn Street in Liverpool:
Village Software Engineering Limited
Tempest, 3rd floor, suite 2
Tithebarn Street
L2 2DT
Liverpool
