CUNY

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. A Dataset I’d Like
I 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.

5. 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.)