Shark Tank

Overview

Shark Tank is a popular American television show where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their product or idea to a panel of “Sharks” (venture capitalists) in the hopes of securing funds and seed money. If this sounds familiar to the Canadians “in the room,” it’s because Shark Tank is the American cousin of Dragons’ Den.

Image retrieved from ABC.com

In this much lower stakes—but much more fun—version, each presenter (or group) will get 2-3 minutes to ‘pitch’ the story their data visualization is attempting to convey using three slides at most (please resist the temptation to add a fourth slide). The panel of Sharks will then judge the data visualizations to settle on a winner.

The goal of this event is to give you some incentive to apply your newly found (or honed) data visualization skills. Specifically, Shark Tank will allow you to bring these skills to bear on concrete research questions and share your substantive insights with an audience of non-specialists in a stress-free environment.

Rubric

Please feel free to review (and download) the judging rubric embedded below: