Mark Gritter<p>I was a volunteer judge today at the Midwest Undergraduate Data Analytics Competition (MUDAC): <a href="https://www.mudac.org/mankato/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">mudac.org/mankato/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a></p><p>The teams were given data about corn, soybean, and sugar beet production in Minnesota, about fertilizer usage, and about manure. They were asked to propose two best sites for "green fertilizer" plants based on this, or any outside sources they could use over the 24 hours of the competition.</p><p>I had a great time, and the teams did great. However... things that some of the teams believed that I don't think are true:<br>* siting a green fertilizer plant (from atmospheric nitrogen) on Nicollet island would not face any opposition<br>* existing manure production is not being used for anything<br>* sometimes everybody in a region just stops producing sugar beets that year. (This may actually be true, but they didn't identify possible labor stoppages as a cause.)<br>* you can use any convenient surface water source for your industrial plant<br>* the correlation between corn production yields and cattle farming is something that could be exploited to increase yields</p><p>Of course, we don't expect college students to be subject-domain experts in a mere 24 hours! But perhaps a good object lesson to have some subject-domain experts closely working with your data science team.</p><p><a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/mudac" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>mudac</span></a> <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/DataScience" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>DataScience</span></a> <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/judging" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>judging</span></a> <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/minnesota" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>minnesota</span></a> <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/agriculture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>agriculture</span></a></p>