In the era of big data,transportation engineers are expected to have solid data analytic skills,which requires universities to cultivate students'data analysis ability.However,there are still some problems in the teaching process of Data Analysis course of postgraduate students in transportation engineering,such as poor combination of major,weak combination of practice,backward teaching tools and resources.Therefore,after analyzing deficiencies of the existing data analysis courses,this paper proposes the teaching mode of"promoting learning through competition and promoting application through learning".Combined with some data competitions,this paper illustrates the unique advantages of this teaching mode in improving data analytic skills of students,which provides new insights for developing similar courses.