Finding data is a pain.

It's hard to locate good numbers about anything.

Here, try it yourself: How much money have the top 3 pharmaceutical firms spent on research & development over the last 5 years?

Bet that took you a while. But these numbers are all in the public record — why should it take more than a few seconds to answer the question?

Working with data is a drag.

Spreadsheets have been around for over 20 years. They've added features by the hundreds. But the basic ability of most users to manipulate numbers has barely progressed in all that time.

Talking usefully about data is nearly impossible.

A huge amount of effort is wasted daily when users repeat the work of finding and manipulating the same numbers. There's no convenient way to make the results of such work available for others to share and build open.

The web does a great job of letting us publish words and talk about them. The same is not true for numbers.

Numbrary® aims to change this.

Spreadsheet software is not the solution. There has been some excellent work in this area, but such software will only ever provide manipulation and presentation tools.

Search engines don't help much. Numbers are not words, which can be scanned and indexed for rapid search and retrieval.

Collections of numbers need as much attention online as do collections of words. With Numbrary®, they will receive that attention.

We take our inspiration from many sources, including:

  • The Knowledge Navigator, a concept video created for Apple in 1987. Many of the key ideas demonstrated in that video have never been implemented. Watch it online here, here or here.
  • The great work of Edward Tufte, “the world's leading analyst of graphic information”.
  • The efforts of such esteemed publications as The New York Times, to make complex data more accessible to their readers.
  • The ongoing struggles of individuals and organizations worldwide to make data useful for themselves and their customers.

Numbrary® — data, at your service.

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