Contest Essentials

Making data sing so everyone can dance and tell the stories. 

The Data Jam emphasizes creativity in presenting data, which begins with the ability to understand and interpret data. These skills—understanding, interpreting, and presenting data—are essential in today’s world, where all sorts of misleading “facts” are only a click away and our ability to gather data outpaces our ability to interpret and categorize it.

Your challenge

Graph, analyze, and creatively interpret data for a public audience. Your goal is to present a compelling data-based story or message that accurately describes a finding from local scientists.

You may create a graphic, story, play, song, or other product—your imagination is the limit! Just make sure your creation describes trends in the data OR uses data to make comparisons between sites or years.

Pre-registration

Pre-registration for the Data Jam Competition is required. See registration deadlines on the home page. Pre-registration is non-binding, but allows us to estimate the number of projects we will need to process. Teams may change their project information and/or team composition between pre-registration and submission.

Projects registered by early bird date will be offered a free online classroom visit (< 50mi from New Bedford, MA) to introduce Data Jam or advise student projects.

Submission/Judging

Projects are both submitted and judged online. Download the judging rubric to see criteria. See the project submission page for specific instructions on how projects should be formatted, submitted, and shared.

Teams

Students can work on projects on their own or in groups. Groups can be as small as two students or as large as a whole class.