Contribute Media
A thank you to everyone who makes this possible: Read More

34. CrossCompute is a web platform where users can run algorithms

Summary

Have you developed a mathematical model or computational / visualization algorithm? Your algorithm could be useful worldwide to people who face a real- world problem but do not want to write code. Professionals in industry, scientists in other fields or researchers in developing countries can quickly apply your work to their domain with a web-based cloud-computing platform like CrossCompute.

Description

CrossCompute is a site where you can run mathematical models and algorithms submitted by researchers. If you are a researcher and you submit your algorithm, you'll get paid each time it runs. We'll send you a URL where users can run your model on their data as many times as they want. More users mean more feedback that you can use to improve your model.

Here is an example: Suppose a mathematician in the US develops an operations research model for placing schools in a community given the locations of existing schools and households, and decides to charge ten cents each time it runs. Then a business owner in Ghana runs the model over the internet to place stores in his district, and saves money because he didn't have to hire a consulting firm or buy a software package. Meanwhile, the mathematician in the US uses the algorithm revenue to fund research to improve the model.

Now is an exciting time to get involved in data analytics for your city or local government. Governments need to prioritize limited resources like emergency response firefighters, police officers and city inspectors. I urge you to contact your local Mayor's office to learn about the challenges they are facing. Then, create a tool to make their life easier. You can send the tool to support@crosscompute.com where it will join a growing collection of analytics for the public good. You will get the credit for the algorithm, the revenue and users from around the world.

Details

Improve this page