software founded january 2010 2010 01 founder larry birnbaum stuart frankel kris hammond headquarters chicago illinois united states products quill quill engage narratives for qlik narratives for power bi website narrativescience.com narrative science is a technology company based in chicago illinois that invented quill an advanced natural language generation platform powered by artificial intelligence . contents 1 history 2 products 2.1 quill 2.2 quill engage 2.3 narratives for qlik 2.4 narratives for power bi 3 recognition 4 competitors 5 criticism 6 see also 7 external links 8 references history edit narrative science was founded in 2010 in evanston illinois after starting at northwestern university as an academic project in the intelligent information laboratory . 1 the first prototype of the company technology went by the project name statsmonkey and was developed in the laboratory by kris hammond larry birnbaum nick allen and john templon . 1 statsmonkey automatically generated news stories on baseball game recaps from applicable baseball game data such as players game score and win probability . 2 narrative science licensed statsmonkey and the related intellectual property from northwestern and began commercial operations in early 2010 . 3 afterwards the company developed a new automated narrative generation platform called quill which analyzes structured data and automatically generates narratives . 4 narrative science has several investors including sap and in q tel the investment arm of the central intelligence agency . 5 in 2014 the chicago company raised another 10 million in equity financing led by customer usaa for a total of 32 million raised since the company s inception . 6 products edit quill edit quill is an advanced natural language generation technology powered by artificial intelligence and delivered as a software as a service saas . 7 automated narrative generation systems take raw data determine what the data means and then generate easy to understand descriptions and explanations in natural language . 8 narrative science s chief scientist kris hammond explains the platform s process as simply mining data for meaning and insight . 7 the software uses specific sets of data to answer questions about the state of the world for its user . 4 to date quill can only write in english . 9 customers include american century investments mastercard and the national health service of england . 10 quill engage edit in march 2014 narrative science launched quill engage a free google analytics application that delivers plain english narrative style data analysis reports for website owners . 11 the application analyzes historical data and trends from google analytics to create both weekly and monthly reports which are delivered in narrative form . 11 quill engage reports key metrics and performance indicators to users such as content engagement web traffic and sources referrals paid search and audience segmentation . 12 the technology is powered by narrative science s quill platform . 12 narratives for qlik edit in january 2016 narrative science partnered with visual analytics software provider qlik to launch narratives for qlik an extension for qlik sense desktop and qlik sense enterprise server that automatically communicates insights from visualizations into natural language . 13 the narratives are perceptive and dynamic explaining what is most interesting and important in the data and updating as the user drills down for deeper analysis . 14 15 16 17 18 narratives for power bi edit in april 2016 narrative science collaborated with microsoft 19 to launch a custom visual for advanced data storytelling . 20 powered by quill the seamlessly integrated visual will enable microsoft power bi users to gain insight from all of their data including salesforce github and adobe analytics by transforming it into intelligent narratives . 21 instead of solely relying on traditional data visualizations for interpretation or analysis explanations 22 narratives for power bi reveals data relationships that extend beyond obvious interpretations . 23 24 recognition edit gartner named narrative science as one of the cool vendors in smart machines in 2014 . 25 in 2013 the company was named to the red herring top 100 for north america 26 which highlights promising startups in asia europe and the americas . narrative science won a 2013 edison award for innovative services in collaboration and knowledge management . 27 competitors edit competing companies in the narrative analytics industry include automated insights 5 a firm based in durham north carolina 6 and yseop inc a european firm headquartered in dallas texas . 6 other similar companies in the area of natural language generation include arria nlg 28 smartologic and linguastat . criticism edit the company received some early criticism from journalists speculating that narrative science was attempting to eliminate the jobs of writers particularly in sports and finance . 29 30 31 32 critics also argue that biases and assumptions in original data sets can lead to reinforced bias in the stories generated by natural language processors 33 such as narrative science . unlike traditional journalism however the computer generated stories appear to be objective . 33 a cbs article compared artificially generated journalism in the financial sector to the property market bubble as it leads to everyone making investments in the same way for the same reasons . 33 the article claimed that computer generated narratives have the potential to amplify biases and assumptions but at far greater speed and on a far wider scale than anything written by humans . 33 an article from the columbia journalism school also criticized the limitations of robo journalism software as it can t assess the damage on the ground can t interview experts and can t discern the relative newsworthiness of various aspects of the story and therefore lacks a necessary human element . 34 see also edit artificial intelligence natural language generation analytics web analytics big data data analysis narrative inquiry natural language processing external links edit official website intelligent information laboratory references edit a b stats monkey . intelligent information laboratory . northwestern university . retrieved 6 june 2014 . program creates computer generated sports stories . npr . npr . retrieved 6 june 2014 . bachman justin . are sportswriters really necessary . business week . business week . retrieved 6 june 2014 . a b woodie alex. your big data will read to you now . datanami . tabor publications . retrieved 10 december 2014 . a b diakopoulos nicholas . automated stories using algorithms to craft news content . tow center for digital journalism . columbia journalism school . retrieved 6 june 2014 . a b c pletz john . narrative science gets 11.5 million to write next chapter . crain s chicago business . crain s. retrieved 6 june 2014 . a b weissman cale . taking data analysis to a new plateau narrative science raises 11.5 m . pandodaily . retrieved 6 june 2014 . rossi ben . how artificial intelligence will make humans smarter . informationage . vitesse media . retrieved 10 december 2014 . carter jamie . could robots be the writers of the future . techradar . futureus . retrieved 10 december 2014 . nhs choices selects narrative science to assist with delivery of healthcare information . businesswire . berkshire hathaway . retrieved 10 december 2014 . a b gesenhues amy . new free google analytics app from narrative science creates reports in plain english . marketing land . retrieved 6 june 2014 . a b penn david . narrative science launches free app to turn data into readable documents . the finovate group inc. retrieved 6 june 2014 . qlik market . retrieved 27 january 2016 . marr bernard . why management dashboards and analytics will never be the same again . forbes . retrieved 27 january 2016 . noyes katherine . got data this free tool will generate a story to tell you what it means . cio . retrieved 27 january 2016 . vizard mike . narrative science brings natural language to qlik visualization software . itbusinessedge . retrieved 27 january 2016 . gutierrez daniel . narrative science launches narratives for qlik . insidebigdata . retrieved 27 january 2016 . penn david . narrative science introduces narratives for qlik . finovate blog . retrieved 27 january 2016 . get natural language narratives in power bi reports . powerbi.microsoft.com . retrieved 2016 07 26 . microsoft power bi narrative science collaborate on a new custom visual for advanced data storytelling the fire hose . 2016 04 26 . retrieved 2016 07 26 . narratives for power bi narrative science . www.narrativescience.com . retrieved 2016 07 26 . new features available for narratives for power bi . powerbi.microsoft.com . retrieved 2016 07 26 . narrative science launches new collaboration with microsoft . built in chicago . retrieved 2016 07 26 . narrative science turns business intel into data driven stories finovate . 2016 04 26 . retrieved 2016 07 26 . austin tom ; linden alexander ; rozwell carol ; brant kenneth ; ghubril adib ; anurag gupta . cool vendors in smart machines 2014 . gartner . gartner inc. retrieved 17 june 2014 . 2013 top 100 north america winners . red herring . red herring inc. retrieved 17 june 2014 . 2013 edison award winners . edison awards . retrieved 17 june 2014 . admission to aim pdf . arria . arria . retrieved 6 june 2014 . clark patrick . can an algorithm replace stock analysts . business week . business week . retrieved 6 june 2014 . levy steven . can an algorithm write a better news story than a human reporter . wired . retrieved 6 june 2014 . fassler joe . can the computers at narrative science replace paid writers . the atlantic . the atlantic . retrieved 6 june 2014 . hamburger ellis . robo journalists are already writing the next generation of news stories . the verge . retrieved 6 june 2014 . a b c d hefferman margaret . the post was written by a human . cbs news . cbs . retrieved 6 june 2014 . howard alexander . the art and science of data driven journalism pdf . tow center for digital journalism . columbia journalism school . retrieved 6 june 2014 . retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title narrative science & oldid 731668691 categories technology companies of the united statestechnology companies established in 2010 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages catal deutsch edit links 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