Took a problem that everyone has (i.e., “What the hell is that song?”) and solved it.

It now has 100 million active users every month.

How does it work?Shazam has built up a database of over 11 million

songs through partnerships with labels. Each song is represented in a spectrogram, a visual representation

of the music’s tones, intensity, and bpm.

What does it produce?

The saying is, “If something is free, you’re the product. Shazam uses a combination of advertising and referral fees to generate income. When your tagged song emerges, you are offered the chance to buy it on any number of platforms. When you do, Shazam gets paid.

A Dataset I’d LikeI would love to investigate the sentencing rate of some of New York City’s most notorious judges. People often share anecdotal evidence of judges who are vastly more punitive than others, including Judge Edward McLaughlin, pictured here. I would want to compare sentencing for similar charges across multiple judges, areas, and economic level.

But ….That data set doesn’t exist yet!

While this would be a large task, I could begin by collecting the names of other judges in a similar position across the boroughs. I would choose a narrow range of charges, perhaps five or six, which are common enough to be statistically significant. I would then gather sentencing data and take averages across each type of offense. This could also include information like frequency of sentencing and economic status of the charged. This would be a lot of work, and I bet some judges wouldn’t be happy. (See below.)