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Continuum Analytics and Open Source Policy Center Leverage the Power of Open Source to Build Vital Policy Forecasting Models with Anaconda
AUSTIN, TX—April 4, 2016—Continuum Analytics, the creator and driving force behind Anaconda, the leading open source analytics platform powered by Python, today announced that Anaconda is powering the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Open Source Policy Center (OSPC) TaxBrain initiative. TaxBrain is a web-based application that lets users simulate and study the effect of tax policy reforms using open source economic models. TaxBrain provides transparent analysis for policy makers and the public, ultimately creating a more democratic and scientific platform to analyze economic policy.
“OSPC’s mission is to empower the public to contribute to government policymaking through open source methods and technology, making policy analysis more transparent, trustworthy and collaborative,” said Matt Jensen, founder and managing director of the Open Source Policy Center at the American Enterprise Institute. “TaxBrain is OSPC’s first product, and with Anaconda it is already improving tax policy by making the policy analysis process more democratic and scientific. By leveraging the power of open source, we are able to provide policy makers, journalists and the general public with the information they need to impact and change policy for the better.”
TaxBrain is made possible by a community of economists, data scientists, software developers, and policy experts who are motivated by a shared belief that public policy should be guided by open scientific inquiry, rather than proprietary analysis. The community also believes that the analysis of public policy should be freely available to everyone, rather than just to a select group of those in power.
“The TaxBrain initiative is only the beginning of a much larger movement to use open source approaches in policy and government,” said Travis Oliphant, CEO and co-founder of Continuum Analytics. “TaxBrain is the perfect example of how Anaconda can inspire people to harness the power of data science to enable positive changes. With Anaconda, the OSPC is able to empower a growing community with the superpowers necessary to promote change and democratic policy reform.”
Anaconda has allowed TaxBrain to tap a vast network of outside contributors in the PyData community to accelerate the total number of open source economic models. Contributions from the PyData community come quickly and—because of Anaconda—get large performance gains from Numba, the Python compiler included in Anaconda, and are easy to integrate into TaxBrain. These contributions can be used in other applications and are hosted on the Anaconda Cloud (anaconda.org/ospc).
To learn more about AEI’s OSPC TaxBrain initiative, please visit http://www.ospc.org/taxbrain/.
About AEI
AEI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization that works to expand liberty, increase individual opportunity, and strengthen free enterprise.
About Continuum Analytics
Continuum Analytics is the creator and driving force behind Anaconda, the leading, modern open source analytics platform powered by Python. We put superpowers into the hands of people who are changing the world.
With more than 2.25M downloads annually and growing, Anaconda is trusted by the world’s leading businesses across industries––financial services, government, health & life sciences, technology, retail & CPG, oil & gas––to solve the world’s most challenging problems. Anaconda does this by helping everyone in the data science team discover, analyze and collaborate by connecting their curiosity and experience with data. With Anaconda, teams manage their open data science environments without any hassles to harness the power of the latest open source analytic and technology innovations.
Our community loves Anaconda because it empowers the entire data science team––data scientists, developers, DevOps, data engineers and business analysts––to connect the dots in their data and accelerate the time-to-value that is required in today’s world. To ensure our customers are successful, we offer comprehensive support, training and professional services.
Continuum Analytics' founders and developers have created or contribute to some of the most popular open data science technologies, including NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, pandas, Jupyter/IPython, Bokeh, Numba and many others. Continuum Analytics is venture-backed by General Catalyst and BuildGroup.
To learn more about Continuum Analytics, visit www.continuum.io.
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