Category: FutureSource

Data Firms Weigh In On South Korean Presidential Race During Polling Blackout

By Brent M. Eastwood

This blog post is part of a series analyzing the newest forms of data forecasting. The South Korean presidential election scheduled for tomorrow has been fraught with anxiety as voters remain divided over the direction of the country’s political future. The aftermath of a presidential impeachment has placed heightened scrutiny over the presidential race. North […]

The Prediction Game: Data Science Firms vs. Pollsters on Sunday’s French Presidential Election

By Brent M. Eastwood and Mathew Burrows

Pollsters used to have the monopoly on predicting electoral outcomes. But startups that use data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence have been crowding into that market and in several cases besting the pollsters at their own game. Brexit and Donald Trump’s electoral victory confounded pollsters, but were forecast by several of the data science […]

Video: Staying Alert to Geopolitical Shifts

With political risk claims and geopolitical uncertainty increasing, Zurich’s David Anderson and the Atlantic Council’s Mathew Burrows talk risk scenario analysis and mitigation.

IMF and World Bank in Need of More Modern Forecasting Methods

By Brent M. Eastwood

Last week the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank held their spring meetings in Washington, DC. Despite worries of rising geopolitical threats, populist views on trade protectionism, and pressures of increased migration to Europe, both organizations have released generally optimistic forecasts of global economic growth for 2017.1 I decided to examine how the […]

Madison, Wisconsin: Applied Science

By Peter Engelke and Robert A. Manning

Madison, Wisconsin, is best known for two things: it is the state capital and it is home to the flagship University of Wisconsin (UW) campus.1 Unfortunately, it is not as well known for its tech hub dynamism. The city has a small but vibrant and growing community of tech startups, a well-educated population (including a […]

Austin, Texas: Keeping It Weird

By Peter Engelke and Robert A. Manning

Like Madison, Austin is a state capital and home to a major public university, the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). Unlike Madison, Austin is a large city (two million people in the metro area) with a diverse population and economy to match.1 But beyond UT Austin and the state capital, Austin is famous […]

Colorado’s Front Range: Rocky Mountain High

By Peter Engelke and Robert A. Manning

There is a remarkable story in how a 1960s hippie haven evolved into perhaps the densest (per capita) startup community in the United States—and with no small amount of serendipity. A modest-size town of one hundred thousand, Boulder—laced with cozy coffee shops and seemingly endless craft beers—feels like a cross between the laid-back atmosphere in […]

California’s Bay Area: Astride the World

By Peter Engelke and Robert A. Manning

California’s Bay Area, a region that stretches northward from Silicon Valley (San Jose, Palo Alto, and environs) to San Francisco and Oakland, is the world’s premier technology hub. By almost every imaginable metric, the Bay Area is ahead of every other hub in the world, often by a large margin. The region, Bay Area interlocutors […]