enigma . io
wget urltoken gunzip ahs2011. sql. gz wget urltoken gunzip acs20135yr. sql. gz
the outstanding folks at urltoken are out with an excellent visualization of who' s really hurting during the government shutdown .
html public
- / / w3c / / dtd html 4. 01 transitional / / en
urltoken
learn more about the language at urltoken. note: you can still write normal css in the. styl files, special syntax is not needed .
bigrf seems to have a memory leak when executed within rstudio. this can be avoided by simply using the make model command. see: urltoken .
now that you' ve got a fresh box with enough storage to hold the entire acs, let' s install (postgresql) [ urltoken ] .
first, run (lsblk) [ urltoken ] and check the output. you should see one drive that' s a lot bigger than the others :
in april 2017, enigma moved its website to urltoken [ 13 ] from its previous site, enigma. io, and ceased referring to itself with the
. io
qualifier .
good data journalism example (how relationship between price of oil vs. production has changed - - this does a good job of introducing a temporal dimension through animation / storytelling instead of a static third dimension which would have been confusing): urltoken
every year 25, 000 americans are killed or injured in fires. as many as 60% of these deaths and injuries can be prevented by simply installing smoke alarms. local fire departments and the
are working hard to make sure homes are protected with proper smoke alarms, but they often have troubles identifying the homes in need of alarms. this was exactly the problem the city of new orleans was looking to solve .
maintains the world' s largest collection of public data. ” enigma collects public data and builds products to help organizations make data - driven decisions .
in 2014, enigma was approached by the new orleans fire department and the city' s office of performance accountability for help in determining which homes are at the highest risk for not having a smoke alarm .
enigma was able to build a project that could help new orleans outreach coordinators determine what house doors to knock on first. after encouraging results and the discovery of nationwide data, enigma decided to generalize the project for over 170 cities. the project was open - sourced and shared on
fast - forward to may 2015, where a datadive occurred in washington d. c. . the red cross was hoping datakind volunteers could help them predict where to target for future fire - safety preparedness events. the datakind volunteers wasted no time and got right to work. they instantly started collecting and merging data from various sources :
while the datadive was occurring, the datakind volunteers discovered the previous project from enigma. they quickly repurposed the code to fit the needs of the red cross situation. in less than 24 hours, the datakind volunteer team had created a map with county - level recommendations of where the american red cross
the two teams are collaborating to use and improve upon the enigma model while incorporating additional data sources from the red cross .
, and it predicts the fire risk block by block for over 170 cities across the united states .
according to marc dacosta of enigma, “we see smoke signals as a first step to helping the public sector leverage open data to improve the lives of citizens. ”
enigma is excited to be doing good with data, and they have already been contacted by many local fire departments. datakind is pleased to see the efforts of its volunteers expanded and put to good use .
jake porway, datakind founder & executive director says, “it’s wonderful to see yet another example of how strong relationships, open data and open code are helping data solutions spread. using data science for good is about more than bringing together the right data. it’s about bringing together the right people. we should always strive to collaborate with others and share learnings - the world benefits when we do. ”
the project is currently welcoming other contributors. if this sounds interesting to you, please fork the
so the concept of big data sounds like a great idea — there are vast stores of information out there just waiting to be used, and we just need something to process it all. but unless you know exactly where to look, it’s difficult to actually find actionable information. more importantly, it’s damn near impossible to cross - reference information from multiple data sets without pulling it and analyzing it yourself .
new york city - based enigma is trying to help users make sense of it all. and it’s raised $ 1. 1 million in seed funding to get it started. the company, which is still in beta, looks at publicly available and proprietary data sets across multiple providers, including government, real estate and finance records .
so for instance you can do trend analysis across government databases to check out patterns in defense spending, and see who’s winning all the big contracts. or you can check out how different real estate markets are performing relative to local job numbers, or you can even figure out something as banal as how many bagels are sold in new york versus other markets .
that’s because enigma has started tracking more than 100, 000 different data sets and begun to structure them in a way that makes searching them not only do - able, but useful. and all of it is available in the enigma dashboard, decoupling the data from obscure sources that it comes from. the company’s relational database makes searching and comparing data sets a breeze .
now that it’s collected all that data, the company is looking to grow its user base pretty significantly. since it has such a broad amount of data, the number of applicable use cases is near infinite: it’s looking to pitch companies in media, finance, consulting, legal, and academic industries .
the funding from triplepoint capital, crosslink capital, early youtuber brent hurley, take two chairman strauss zelnick, and colbeck capital partner matthew glass will help in that pursuit .
the new york times company selectively invests in digital media startups to support our innovation efforts .
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indeed job search site with a presence in more than fifty countries. (acquired by recruit co. )
vidible a transparent, programmatic platform for buyers and sellers of video. (acquired by aol )
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hicham oudghiri, a co - founder of enigma, demonstrated an application of his company’s service during the techcrunch disrupt conference in 2013 .
trolling government records for juicy details about companies and their executives can be a ponderous task. i often find myself querying the websites of multiple federal agencies, each using its own particular terminology and data forms, just for a glimpse of one company’s business .
but a few new services aim to reduce that friction not just for reporters, but also for investors and companies that might use the information in making business decisions. one site, rankandfiled. com, is designed to make company filings with the securities and exchange commission more intelligible. it also offers visitors an instant snapshot of industry relationships, in a multicolored “influence” graph that charts the various companies in which a business’s officers and directors own shares. according to the site, pooh - bahs at google, for example, have held shares in apple, netflix, linkedin, zynga, cisco, amazon and pixar .
another site, enigma. io, has obtained, standardized and collated thousands of data sets — including information on companies’ lobbying activities and their contributions to state election campaigns — made public by federal and state agencies. starting this weekend, the public will be able to use it, at no charge, to seek information about a single company across dozens of government sources at once .
“what we are trying to do is take these public data sets which, due to the fact of their obscurity, are not currently linked, and go about redressing that, ” marc dacosta, the co - founder of enigma, told me recently at the enigma offices in lower manhattan .
five years ago, to encourage research studies and app development, the obama administration introduced data. gov, a site that catalogs data held by federal agencies. last may, president obama issued an executive order requiring agencies to make the information they generate available in computer - readable formats. publishing and analytics start - ups are now tapping those resources to develop products for consumers and businesses. among them, enigma hopes to become what mr. dacosta describes as “a google for public data. ”
the home page of enigma. io, which allows the public to gather information about a single company across dozens of government sources at once .
ask enigma for facts about lockheed martin, for example, and here are some of the disparate details that surface: last year, this military contractor entered into agreements with the government worth about $ 40. 7 billion. another interesting tidbit about the company is that in 2013, marillyn a. hewson, the chief executive, visited the white house five times; on two of those occasions the “visitee” was “potus, ” meaning the president of the united states, the logs indicate. and company employees reported giving about $ 51, 000 to the presidential campaign committees obama for america and the obama victory fund .
although these details may be unrelated, together they depict a politically influential and connected contractor. in fact, that kind of serendipitous information amalgam is one of enigma’s aims. mr. dacosta says he believes that “there’s a huge amount you can learn about the world by putting these data sources in conversation with one another. ”
he founded the company three years ago with hicham oudghiri, a former roommate at columbia university, where both majored in philosophy. at the time, each was working on a data - driven project — mr. dacosta in climate mapping and mr. oudghiri in finance — and felt frustrated in his attempts to harness public information .
“it’s scattered across government agencies, ” mr. dacosta notes. “you don’t even know what data is relevant to you. ”
they decided to build a system to streamline the process by scraping certain federal and state databases, and applying or negotiating for access to other sources. in a recent round of financing, the company raised $ 4. 5 million from investors, including comcast ventures and the new york times company .
but setting up the system was laborious. for one thing, because the names of businesses and other kinds of information in public data sets aren’t standardized, enigma had to develop its own algorithm to allow users to search for a single company simultaneously across different agencies .
the effort paid off. “enigma figured out a way to get around the problem for private - sector entities, ” says hudson hollister, the executive director of the
for short, which would require governmentwide data standardization. “if the government adopted data standards, ” mr. hollister says, “analytics would be cheaper and insight would be better. ”
on rankandfiled. com, a graph displays the names of companies in which google’s officers and directors have owned shares .
obtaining public records can be cumbersome in the first place. to offer its users information about the kinds of items that american businesses import, for example, enigma pays $ 100 a day for a daily cd from the customs department; the disks contain bills of lading for all of the shipments that arrived the previous day .
“one of the values we bring is dealing with all of that so consumers of the data don’t have to, ” mr. dacosta says .
although the site has a simple search bar, the user interface isn’t entirely intuitive. queries often result in long lists that, for some users, may require a bit of a learning curve to navigate. the site also doesn’t rank results — because, mr. dacosta says, each user has individual priorities .
simple searches are free, but the company markets paid subscriptions for people seeking customized data sets or full access to the company’s analytics software .
enigma is also tailoring its platform for different industries. it has developed a program, now being tested by several banks, to give credit underwriters more information about small businesses, with revenue of less than $ 10 million, that lack detailed financial track records. the idea is that collating facts from different data sets — like government contracts and specialty - worker visas — may reduce a bank’s risk of providing credit to small businesses .
enigma envisions other industries, like insurance, and app developers seeking its analytics platform as well .
“we want to build a generalizable platform that is acting as the route, as the enabler, ” mr. dacosta says, “but not necessarily driving all of the use cases. ”
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both the startup battlefield and the disrupt cup, taking home $ 50, 000 and beating out six other finalists .
enigma aims to make sorting through public data a breeze. it pulls info from over 100, 000 data sources and finds connections between them. think sec filings, state and federal records, lists of frozen assets, and even crunchbase .
if you search
google ,
for example, enigma brings up a list of databases including granted patents, h - 1b visa applications, and sec filings. if you click h - 1b visa applications, you can see every application google filed and drill it down to see only software engineers. from there, you can quickly see that the u. s. department of labor certified 471 of google' s applications for software engineers .
sure, the data is already out there, but it' s not easily accessible. the founders also maintain that it' s hard to see the connections between those sources of public data .
enigma seems a lot like recorded future, the data startup with $ 20 million of funding from investors like google ventures and the venture arm of the cia, in - q - tel. both companies are aiming to make it easier to sift through and find correlations between publicly available data .
at a very macro level, enigma is working the same business problem: gaining insight for business decisions from public, open source information ,
recordedfuture vp of product matt kodama tells business insider .
enigma and recorded future are working to harness different kinds of public information to that end, and that' s a really critical distinction that will flow all the way through our respective products .
already, enigma has raised $ 1. 45 million in seed funding, and has partnered with harvard business school, research firm gerson lehrman group, s & p; capital iq, and the new york times .
past techcrunch disrupt ny winners include soluto, getaround, and uberconference. all three of those startups have fared pretty well, but none are runaway successes, at least not yet .
soluto, the winner of disrupt' s inaugural event in new york in 2010, has raised $ 18 million in funding to continue offering support tools to small businesses for managing and fixing their pcs. just last month, it introduced a new service to support small businesses with up to 10 pcs .
getaround, a peer - to - peer car rental startup, has raised $ 19 million to date from investors including yahoo ceo marissa mayer, collaborative fund, menlo ventures, and crunchfund. it' s still a relatively young company but is definitely a rising star in the
sharing economy .
uberconference, the winner of techcrunch disrupt 2012, has done pretty well. earlier this year, it partnered with billion - dollar startup evernote to share notes in conference calls .
redbeacon won the top prize at techcrunch 50 in 2009, went on to raise $ 7. 4 million, and then sold to home depot for an undisclosed amount .
groupme, a group messaging app that came to fruition during a hackathon at disrupt ny 2010, got snapped up by skype for north of $ 43 million .
new york; june 26, 2014 — leading - edge mobility, data analytics and credit risk solutions were among the six technology innovations demonstrated for top financial services, venture capital and technology executives at the fourth annual fintech innovation lab demo day in new york today. the lab is a 12 - week mentoring program created by accenture (nyse: acn) and the partnership fund for new york city and supported by more than a dozen of the world’s leading financial institutions to promote financial services technology (“fintech”) innovation and high tech job growth in new york city .
this year’s entrepreneurs were chosen by chief technology officers from 15 participating financial institutions. the companies included enigma, kasisto, lmrkts, pymetrics, revolutioncredit and standard treasury. the group has spent the last 12 weeks receiving high level mentoring, product and business development advice and exposure to senior financial industry, technology and venture capital executives .
since the lab was founded in 2010, the 18 previous alumni companies have raised a total of more than $ 76 million in financing after participating in the program. one alumni company was recently acquired for $ 175 million. financial services companies supporting the lab include: ally financial, american express, bank of america, barclays, capital one, citi, credit suisse, deutsche bank, goldman sachs, guardian life, jpmorgan chase, morgan stanley, new york life, state street corporation and ubs. supporting venture capital firms include bain capital ventures, contour venture partners, rho ventures, rre ventures and warburg pincus .
enigma provides access to thousands of disparate sources of public data on companies, people, and locations. it pulls together tens of billions of records from sources as diverse as sec filings, government spending contracts, and asset - ownership records – conveniently indexes the information so it can be used to support business decisions, such as underwriting, prospecting and trading. financial institutions use enigma as a supplement to proprietary databases to increase access to credit for small businesses, and assess real estate portfolio risk .
kasisto is a new spin off from sri international, the creator of siri. kasisto provides a next generation, digital banking experience through a conversational user interface that lets consumers easily and quickly access financial information and perform complex transactions on their smartphones and tablet devices. the kasisto conversational ai platform allows banks to rapidly and cost - effectively integrate branded intelligent virtual personal assistants into their mobile applications. from retail to private to commercial banking, the kasisto platform can be used to provide breakthrough customer experience, reduce costs and drive better user engagement on mobile channel .
lmrkts’ platform enables market participants to report, reconcile and reduce counterparty credit risk across a variety of asset classes. as a neutral third party, lmrkts helps financial institutions net their existing derivatives exposures by applying algorithms that recommend changes in counterparty exposures when institutions are both long and short. this can help significantly reduce counterparty risk and related capital charges for banks, and can be employed as a central platform for minimizing systemic risk .
pymetrics is the next generation job marketplace. using proven neuroscience and big data, they match candidates to jobs and companies where they’ll perform at the highest levels. pymetrics assesses career aptitude in candidates with neuroscience games, the latest scientific innovation in cognitive and personality assessment. they create proprietary, data - driven profiles from top employees’ performance on the games to find top - suited job candidates. companies using pymetrics see massive efficiency gains in recruiting and overall performance management .
revolutioncredit is the first b2b credit data and decisioning platform to combine behavioral data and gamified financial education to benefit both consumers and financial institutions. lenders, creditors, utilities, and subscription service providers partner with revolutioncredit to assess consumer credit worthiness, improve customer acquisition and retention, and decrease loan losses. through revolutioncredit creditors identify consumers who will perform one to two credit score bands better than their credit score would otherwise indicate .
standard treasury builds, maintains, and supports white - labeled and co - branded developer platforms for banks worldwide. standard treasury partner banks see material top - line growth through decreased costs to service their customers, decreased churn, and increased transaction volumes, while delivering tremendous value to their customers .
“the fintech innovation lab leverages new york city’s position as the largest market in the country for enterprise - grade financial technology, ” said maria gotsch, president and ceo of the partnership fund for new york city. “because of this regional advantage, the city’s core banks and other financial institutions are able to commit their time and resources to building the local tech sector. their involvement adds expertise and insight to help accelerate new product development for the six participating companies at a speed that would otherwise not be possible. the result is faster product launches, local job creation and the establishment of new york city as a hub for innovative financial tech. ”
“fintech entrepreneurial innovations are becoming a valuable strategic lever for the financial services industry, ” said bob gach, global industry managing director of accenture’s capital markets practice. “new technologies have made it possible for small ventures to research and develop powerful solutions for industry ‘pain points’ and create growth opportunities. by opening their doors to these ideas, banks can accelerate their own innovation agendas and drive growth and efficiency. we are proud of the impact that the fintech innovation lab is having on the fintech ecosystem and of the work that has been done by the entrepreneurs and financial institutions in this year’s program. ”
the fintech innovation lab has developed an extensive network of experienced entrepreneurs to provide advice to participants. pro bono advice was provided to the 2014 class by members of the newtork, including three distinguished executives - in - residence: andy brown, former group chief technology officer at ubs; cristóbal conde, former ceo of sungard; and, dr. david mordecai, visiting scholar at new york university’s courant institute of mathematical sciences .
“ally financial is committed to providing its customers with advanced technology solutions. we’re proud to work with the fintech innovation lab to identify emerging technologies and help shape their products for the financial services market, ” said michael baresich, chief information officer at ally financial inc .
“it is important we continue to work with and support start - ups, ” said david reilly, bank of america technology infrastructure executive. “not only are these companies’ ideas and solutions addressing real customer needs and issues, they also are providing the opportunity for financial institutions to think in a non - traditional way about approaching change as a form of innovation across their organizations. ”
“we continually explore and invest in emerging technologies to keep pace with the rapid rate of change, ” said skip potter, vice president, engineering at capital one. “the impact and digital disruption of cloud and social technologies, widespread mobility and data analytics is on display every day, and supporting the fintech innovation lab is one way we stay connected and engaged with some of the latest thinking in banking technology. ”
“each year, the pool of applicants and entrepreneurs selected improves, ” said nigel faulkner, credit suisse’s cio of investment banking. “and i am impressed with both the innovation they bring to the table and the value this program generates for the startup firms, financial institutions, and new york city overall. we’re proud to be global sponsors and look forward to next year’s entries. ”
“jpmorgan chase is excited to partner with the fintech innovation lab to mentor this year’s class of innovative startups in nyc, ” said larry feinsmith, managing director, global technology strategy and partnerships, jpmorgan chase. “we are in a unique position to work closely with these emerging companies on disruptive solutions for our critical business challenges. ”
based on the success of the fintech innovation lab in new york, accenture launched the fintech innovation lab london in 2012 and recently launched the fintech innovation lab asia - pacific in hong kong .
about the partnership fund for new york city the partnership fund for new york city is the $ 110 million investment arm of the partnership for new york city (www. pfnyc. org). the fund’s mission is to engage the city’s business leaders to identify and support promising nyc - based entrepreneurs in both the for - profit and non - profit sectors to create jobs, spur new business and expand opportunities for new yorkers to participate in the city’s economy. the fund is governed by a board of directors co - chaired by richard m. cashin, managing partner of one equity partners, and charles “chip” kaye, co - president of warburg pincus llc. maria gotsch serves as president and ceo of the fund .
about accenture accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 289, 000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high - performance businesses and governments. the company generated net revenues of us $ 28. 6 billion for the fiscal year ended aug. 31, 2013. its home page iswww. accenture. com .
most importantly, it shows you the scale of certain departments when it comes to employment .
this rectangle represents all the employees of the federal government. it' s divided into smaller boxes that correspond to individual departments. those boxes are sized proportionally to the number of people who work in them. the red portion are furloughed employees. the blue portion are people exempt from furlough and still on the job. the different shades of blue refer to why they' re still on the job .
so, for instance, nasa — a smaller box on the lower right — has 97% of its employees furloughed .
as the washington post' s brad plumer noted on twitter, the department of defense indicated over the weekend they' d be recalling many of their workers, so this chart is subject to get a bit bluer the left side .
ny battlefield startups has been one of our strongest yet, but out of the 30 that entered the fray only seven would go on to the final round. healthyout, enigma, floored, glide, han: dle, supplyshift, and zenefits emerged from the pack as our seven finalists, and their respective teams were faced with another challenge .
they had to take the stage one more time to present and face even more intense scrutiny from our judges, sequoia capital partner roelof botha, allen & co. managing director nancy peretsman, sv angel managing partner david lee, kpcb partner chi - hua chien, crunchfund partner (and techcrunch founder) michael arrington, and techcrunch co - editor eric eldon .
our judges sequestered themselves backstage at the manhattan center for quite some time, but they eventually settled on one ambitious startup .
enigma, founded by marc dacosta, hicham oudghiri, jeremy bronfmann, and raphaël guilleminot, is a web service that allows its users to dig into a vast amount of publicly available (but hard - to - obtain) data. the service pulls its data from more than 100, 000 data sources, but the process of sifting through all this information is deceptively simple — a quick search for a person’s name and company brings up multiple previewable tables of information, and jumping in and playing with data is thoughtfully executed .
thinking of enigma as a sort of wolfram alpha for public data gets you close, but enigma is much smarter when it comes to finding connections between seemingly disparate data points. to date, enigma has raised $ 1. 45 million in seed stage funding, and has locked up partnerships with the harvard business school, research firm gerson lehrman group, s & p capital iq, and newly - minted strategic investor the new york times .
handle (or han: dle), founded by shawn carolan and jonathan mccoy, is a so - called “priority engine” available as a web app and ios app that aims to make users become more productive. and how do the apps do that? by basically folding the functionality of an email client and a task manager into a single service. users are able to “triage” their emails, as well as archive them for later perusal, but they’re also able to create tasks and schedule them for completion on a given day .
the web app is full of power - user shortcuts (hitting the ‘a’ key archives an email, while ‘r’ opens a response) — that coupled with the overall focus on forming a clear picture of what needs to be accomplished on any given day makes for a potentially powerful tool for the chronically busy. so far, handle raised $ 4 million from menlo ventures (where carolan is managing director) .
for a technology startup to really catch the eye of banks' top tech executives it must, first and foremost, meet a need that few others in the marketplace are meeting .
a case in point is lmrkts llc, a new york - based firm that aims to help banks reduce risk in their derivatives portfolios by using algorithms to spot excessive counterparty risk. the firm was showcased at a financial technology event in new york last week, and it left a lasting impression on many of the attendees .
though it has a relatively small customer base, lmrkts is tackling a massive industry problem ,
says david reilly, technology infrastructure executive at bank of america .
i think their timing is good and the solution is compelling .
lmrkts was one was one of six startups that beat out dozens of other financial technology firms for the right to present their stories to tech executives from 15 of the nation' s largest banks at credit suisse' s well - appointed building overlooking madison square park .
the one - day event, sponsored by accenture and the partnership fund for new york city, was the culmination of a 12 - week program in which the firms were paired with senior bank executives and coached in how they could best meet the industry' s needs. other startups featured included kasisto, which developed an app that responds to voice commands; enigma, a firm that aggregates public data to help banks make credit decisions; and revolutioncredit, which offers online financial education to adults with thin credit histories .
lmrkts already has seven banks experimenting with its platform. it focuses on the derivatives contracts that represent the highest cost to banks, those signed outside the clearinghouses. banks report and reconcile their counterparty exposures through these contracts on lmrkts' platform, and lmrkts' algorithms look at banks' exposures and suggest trades they may want to add or delete. lmrkts gets paid if banks choose the exposure - reducing trades it recommends .
so why can' t banks do all of this themselves ?
they don' t have a holistic view of exposures ,
says lucio biase, the company' s founder .
kasisto' s app was also popular with the bankers. its virtual assistant technology might best be compared to apple' s siri  in fact, the software came out of sri international, which created siri .
like siri, kasisto' s software is a combination of voice recognition, natural language understanding and artificial intelligence. it translates the customer' s spoken words into text, uses natural language understanding to figure out what the customer wants, and searches through databases for the answers, which it translates back into speech .
for instance, a customer might ask ,
how much did i spend at whole foods this month ?
and the app will reply with a dollar amount .
the idea of having a conversation with our mobile devices is not too far - fetched  we talk to our cars and to interactive voice response systems ,
nick toro, director at credit suisse, points out .
the challenge is accuracy and context, having the system understand what we want to say .
zor gorelov, kasisto' s chief executive, observes that mobile is the fastest - growing channel for financial services, but that
there are fundamental usability issues that prevent people from doing more with their mobile banking app .
kasisto is testing the technology with two banks .
the company takes historically proprietary systems and exposes them through an application programming interface layer that can be used by customers, by banks themselves or by third parties, to cut costs, streamline processes or create new revenue streams. a bank might use the software to fully automate the way it buys products from suppliers, for instance .
apis are a standard way two computers can talk to each other at high speed and with great autonomy ,
says dan kimerling, ceo of standard treasury. the company is already at $ 1 million in annual revenue and plans to open a new york office later this year .
enigma, another startup in the group, makes public data readily accessible to banks that can be used to help make loan decisions. it has gathered public data from 100, 000 public sources and provides apis and data visualization to enable companies to make use of it. for instance, a bank might look up water usage records to predict the occupancy of a building based on its water use. this could be used to inform commercial real estate loan decisions. another use case is employee benefit plans, which have to be filed with the department of labor. they can be used to figure out the number of employees, growth rate and turnover rate at a company, providing strong background for a business credit underwriting decision .
we call ourselves the content arm of big data ,
says craig danton, head of business development at enigma .
revolutioncredit, another chosen startup, offers an alternative to credit scores for people with limited credit histories. consumers who sign up for the service  usually at the recommendation of their banks  are put through a series of online courses and tests on financial topics, the idea being that they will be more creditworthy once they complete the course .
traditional credit scores don' t provide enough differentiation for the 120 million americans who have middling scores, says zaydoon munir, founder and ceo of revolutioncredit. and they do nothing for those with thin files .
consumers are getting stuck in a cycle of rejection ,
he said .
through its tests, revolutioncredit gathers behavioral data from consumers. at the end of the series, the consumer receives a certificate meant to prove they have the willingness and financial savviness to pay their bills. it' s all free to the consumer, who is
invited
to participate; banks that offer this pay a licensing fee .
for one personal loan company, munir said revolutioncredit worked with 4, 200 borrowers. at the end of six months, consumers who used revolution credit had 30% lower delinquency rates than their peers with the same credit scores, he says .
another presenter was pymetrics, a startup that uses gamification to help companies make hiring decisions .
pymetrics co - founder frida polli says her company thinks of itself as a next - generation job marketplace that uses neuroscience and big data to help companies and candidates find each other .
linkedin meets okcupid ,
she calls it .
trying to find the right candidates is a challenge in financial services, polli says. typically 250 resumes are submitted for each position and about 60% of applicants are cut at the resume stage. about 30% to 50% of new hires don' t work out after the first year, and 200% of salary costs are lost when a job turns over .
polli had the demo day audience play one of her company' s games, one that looks at attention and impulsively. attendees were shown colored circles and plus signs, and told to clap only when they saw a red circle. several people also clapped whenever a blue circle appeared, showing their impulsivity. some didn' t clap at all, showing either lack of attention or lack of buy - in to the exercise .
the company works with 25 colleges across the country, including carnegie mellon, mit, the university of texas, sanford, and ucla, and has 25, 000 users in its system .
pymetrics has completed a pilot with one financial institution and has four others under way, she says .
learn about the new datasets and capture methods we are exploring to enhance the predictive scoring of small business .
every day, the global historical climatology network collects temperatures from 90, 000 weather stations. dating back as far as the late 1700' s, the records provide an incredible source of insight into our changing climate .
using this data, we can determine what the weather is normally like for most places on earth. we can tell you that the average low temperature in new york city on january 11th is 29°f and that the average high temperature in los angeles on july 24th is 80°f .
once we know what temperatures to expect on any given day with a certain degree of confidence, we can sift out the uneventful days, leaving only anomalous weather events .
these criteria enabled us to track the last 50 years of temperature anomalies and categorize them into four types .
anomalies has risen from about 42% of the total to almost 67% of the total – an average increase of 0. 5% per year. this trend, fitted with a generalized linear model, accounts for 40% of the year - to - year variation in warm versus cold anomalies, and is highly significant with a p - value approaching 0. 0. though we remain cautious about making predictions based on this model, it suggests that this yearly proportion of warm anomalies will regularly fall above 70% in the 2030' s .
yet despite the clarity of this trend, it is difficult to detect on a day - to - day basis. this past winter' s polar vortex, for example, prompted some pundits to claim that global warming is a
hoax
. but while daily and even annual weather trends may be subject to severe fluctuations, climate change shifts starkly into focus when viewed through a historical lens .
starting with the raw files on noaa' s ftp server, we downloaded all historical daily measurements from each of the 90, 000 weather stations worldwide, standardized their schemas, and geocoded the stations' locations. this 90 gb file constituted nearly 900 million rows. to ensure data quality, we filtered this file to stations in the u. s. which had consistently collected data throughout the 50 year period of 1964 to 2013. this left us with 2, 716 stations and 25 gb of data .
armed with this refined dataset, we computed the historical range of low and high temperatures for each station for each month of the year .
we then compared each station' s daily temperatures to its corresponding monthly distribution. if one or both of these measurements fell in the bottom or top 2% on a given day, we labeled it an
anomaly
according to the typology above. for instance, over the 50 year period, we identified 64 temperature anomalies in roanoke, alabama in the month of april, which has an average low of 46°f and high of 76°f .
nationally, this process yielded about 3 million records, or just over 1, 000 anomalous days per station .
enigma public is a search engine and api for public data. we find certain datasets to be especially powerful because the underlying phenomena they capture have such a fundamental impact on our world. climate affects our agricultural production, the price of gasoline, the livelihood of small businesses or temporary farm workers, and ultimately the sustainability of our species on this planet .
on march 31st, the intergovernmental panel on climate change released a report reaffirming the scientific community' s consensus that the
worst is yet to come .
the report projects the effects of climate change on society in the next decades, and questions for instance, the sustainability of our food supply. the white house also recently declared that
every citizen will be affected by climate change ,
and issued call to action for the open exploration of climate data .
at enigma, our priority is to enable the exploration of climate change by bringing the data to the table. we have come a long way since the earliest efforts in gathering climate data. however accessing the data can be a painful process, especially when datasets are siloed in scattered locations or varied formats. weather signals alone can be powerful indicators, but it is by placing them in relation to our economy and society that the impact of climate change becomes meaningful .
we are committed to connecting this entire world of public data to the developers, researchers, data scientists, and climatologists who are striving to make sense of our changing climate and its effect on our lives. we will support civic projects in any capacity, so get in touch if you' re looking to make an impact - we' d love to help out. join us in this effort and go grab some data .
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enigma reels in $ 4. 5m to collect and organize loads of the world' s public data | venturebeat
enigma reels in $ 4. 5m to collect and organize loads of the world’s public data
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the private data that companies keep to themselves can influence important decisions, like entering markets and discontinuing products. but sometimes publicly available data sets can be helpful, too .
the new york times co. seems to think so. the newspaper company is investing in enigma, a startup that aims to help businesses use public data. enigma brings many data sets together and provides a search function and a few analytics tools to run on top of users’ findings .
“the new york times used enigma to break stories for journalistic purposes, as have many other news agencies as well, ” enigma cofounder marc dacosta said in an interview with venturebeat .
comcast ventures, american express ventures, and crosslink capital also are participating in the $ 4. 5 million round of funding for enigma, which was announced this morning. the mix of investors shows how big companies see value in the tool and wisdom in the startup’s deep belief in the power of public data .
the startup tries to make life easier for people who want to combine and look through collections of data from many sources. those sources already include a bunch of local, state, and federal government agencies in the united states. the new funding will help enigma slurp up data from other countries, dacosta said .
with enigma, users can enter the name of, say, a company and enigma spits back in response multiple references to the company across a wide variety of documents. users can filter results and do basic calculations on numbers. from there, they can export their findings for additional. csv format .
this year enigma will tack on new features for its cloud - based software to enable users to ask more specific questions of the data it has on file. for example, they could instantly inspect state - level property records on apple or one of its subsidiaries .
“the idea is you could look up a person or a company and essentially have a kind of dossier about them or their connections, because you have this data resource to draw upon, ” dacosta said .
other companies have been looking to provide better ways to mine public data. for instance, there’s knoema, which layers visualizations and other insights from data on top of things people see in their web browsers. and a startup called marinexplore specializes in data related to oceans, and it offers users lots of data from federal agencies like the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. marinexplore has raised $ 1. 4 million in seed funding .
enigma is “a much more generalist platform” than marinexplore, dacosta said. it contains data on energy, campaign finance, corporate funding, aviation, and much more .
the company also stands out from companies that help integrate and analyze many kinds of data, public or not, because they typically don’t come pre - loaded with a variety of data that’s clean and ready to search through.
enigma is an operational data management and intelligence company . often recognized for its public data asset , enigma public , the company places data into the context of the real world and makes it connected , open , and actionable . enigma public is a data warehouse website which provides an aggregated collection of public data from international government agencies , organizations , and businesses . data can be accessed through enigma 's web-based user interface , which also provides a collection of data analytics tools , or from their web api . as of may 2016 , users may register for a free rate-limited account to access the data for personal or academic use , while unfettered or commercial access is available for a monthly fee . 
enigma is an operational data management and intelligence company. often recognized for its public data asset, enigma public, the company places data into the context of the real world and makes it connected, open, and actionable. enigma public is a data warehouse website which provides an aggregated collection of public data from international government agencies, organizations, and businesses. data can be accessed through enigma's web-based user interface, which also provides a collection of data analytics tools, or from their web api. as of may 2016, users may register for a free rate-limited account to access the data for personal or academic use, while unfettered or commercial access is available for a monthly fee.
enigma is an operational data management and intelligence company. often recognized for its public data asset, enigma public, the company places data into the context of the real world and makes it connected, open, and actionable. enigma public is a data warehouse website which provides an aggregated collection of public data from international government agencies, organizations, and businesses. data can be accessed through enigma's web-based user interface, which also provides a collection of data analytics tools, or from their web api. as of may 2016, users may register for a free rate-limited account to access the data for personal or academic use, while unfettered or commercial access is available for a monthly fee.