THE CHAMPIONS! Winning team, Caritos, Roda and Secreto, smile proudly with their medals

It’s a back-to-back win for the Institute of Statistics last February 9 as SAS^® Philippines held its 2nd   Academic Analytics Conference at the One Esplanade Place, Roxas Boulevard. This conference gathers SAS users and programmers from different universities, government institutions, and private companies across the country to share their knowledge and expertise on analytics leveraging on big data. Attendees were welcomed by SAS Technical Sales Manager Ms. Ivy M. Fernandez, a former faculty of INSTAT.

Two abstracts from the Institute of Statistics advanced to the list of top seven abstracts which included teams from Mapua Institute of Technology, De La Salle University and University of the Philippines Diliman. The winning paper entitled “Developing a Visualization Tool for Disaster Management in Local Government Units” was submitted by Arianne Camielle Caritos, Christine Glydel Roda, and Ma. Bernadette Secreto under the guidance of Dr. Dalisay S. Maligalig from  INSTAT while the other paper entitled “A Shift from Traditional Data: Determining Leading Economic Indicators in the Philippines Using Big Data ” was submitted by Rosalyn Escultura, Ira Joy Martin, and Ed Kieran Reyes with  Mr. Ronald R. Roldan Jr. from INSTAT as adviser.  In 2014, the team of Angelyn Mananghaya, Micaelah de Chavez and Ian Nuestro coached by John Lorenzo Yambot emerged as the top winners. As prize, the SAS Analytics champions will attend the SAS Global Forum  on April 6-9, 2017 in Orlando, Florida, USA. The winning team presented their research during the conference and were awarded medals and plaque. Also included as prize is an all-expense-paid trip to attend the SAS^® Global Forum. For its prize, INSTAT receives 100,000  pesos worth of financial support for future analytics  projects.  — RT Marcelino