Three brand new Humber graduates are celebrating winning the ECOP Data Viz challenge while they were in the final term of the Research Analyst program.
Suleman Kunda, Sofia Ahmed, and Shahbaz Shaikh, became the winners in November 2022, only a month before completing their studies.
“It was a great experience, it definitely helped us build connections in the industry. It was really good to win this award,” Kunda said.
The award is presented by McMaster’s University Economics Community of Practice (ECOP) in collaboration with Data Docket.
To participate, students from institutions all over Ontario were invited to submit their proposals. The major topic was a look at Ontario’s economic health through the pandemic and the gradual process of economic recovery.
Kunda connected with his classmates Ahmed and Shaikh to prepare a visualization and participate in the project.
“I have an cconomics background, and housing is something that I was looking at since I arrived in Canada because is pretty expensive to live in Toronto,” he said.
Their project featured the cost of housing for Ontario’s vulnerable populations. The visualization shows the price of housing affects each population group differently in the city, in categories such as ethnicity and vulnerability risk.
“I found that I expend around 60 per cent of my income in my rent. And I knew, coming from an Economics background, that this amount shouldn’t be more than 25 or 30 per cent,” Kunda said.
The inspiration behind their idea was their personal experience trying to find affordable places to live in Toronto, as newcomers to the country.
“We all just migrated to this country, so we were all struggling with finding affordable housing. Our project was very close to our personal experiences as migrants cause we were all facing this issue,” Ahmed said.
Sofia Ahmed, like her classmates, deeply cares about housing affordability as an international student.
“Getting a link between what the average income is and how that affects these groups in terms of housing was the most challenging part, but I’m glad about the final result,” she said.
For Shahbaz Shaikh, another challenging part is the communication part that is involved while creating an infographic.
“When you build a visualization, what is important is that at the moment someone sees that visualization, they should be able to make a story out of it,” he said.
Shahbaz Shaikh was one of the Humber students who won the best visualization award
“Our project also talks about what kind of policies can the government implement to address the housing issue in the province. There are still lots to be done,” Ahmed said.
They said the courses they were taking in the Research Analyst program at Humber College were really helpful to develop their project.
We had access to really powerful tools, such as Power BI, AskQL, and even Tableau. I used those learnings to build our visualization,” Ahmed said.
“It was a great experience, it definitely helped us build connections in the industry. It was really good to win this award,” Kunda said.