Data Stories

Every Successful Modern Data Team Has an Analytics Engineer—and it could be you.

If you’ve been juggling the twin roles of business intelligence and data engineering at work, you may have evolved into something else entirely—the Analytics Engineer.

What drives deforestation? We use AI to find out

We’ve found that using ML to detect, classify, and map out the drivers of deforestation is a promising tool.

Why SQL is your ultimate tool for the modern data stack

The accessible nature of SQL can help you maximize the efficiency and flexibility that come with using a modern data stack.

How To Power Your Modern Data Stack with ELT Pipelines

Using ELT to process data has several advantages over ETL, including an easier way to start implementing the modern data stack.

Process geospatial data quickly with Thinking Machines' open source tool, GeoWrangler

Thinking Machines launches its open source data wrangling tool for faster geospatial data processing.

What's so great about the modern data stack?

MDS is an ecosystem of technology that makes it much easier to govern, access, transform, and process data in an accessible and affordable way.

How to design a sustainable future with AI

AI alone can’t save us, but we can use it to develop solutions and design a sustainable future for everyone.

How to measure returns on your AI investment

How do we measure gains from AI projects?

Scaling Better with AI

A majority of AI projects fail. How do we make sure they hit the mark?

5 Ways Coaching Drove Our Growth Across Southeast Asia

Viewed as an investment, executive coaching drove Thinking Machines’ growth from a startup to a team of 150 people.

5 ways investing in cloud data platforms help your business

We make the case for why your business should upgrade from on-prem to cloud data platforms.

Why We Think Sabbatical Leave Benefits Are Important

Sabbaticals have led many of us at Thinking Machines to return feeling recharged, with fresh eyes, and full of new ideas.

To lead with vision, you need to lead with values

Leading with values can set the foundation for organizational alignment, productivity, and longevity in a way that vision alone can’t.

We’re Better With AI, Pt 3: Mapping Out Your AI Learning Process

The process of becoming an AI-driven organization is full of trials and errors—but it doesn’t have to go haywire. In this blog, we share how to map out every stage of the journey for success.

We’re Better With AI, Pt 2: Your First Steps to AI Innovation

Taking your first steps to drive AI innovation in your company can be scary, but it all starts with understanding your why, your how, and aiming for action.

Publishing Model Benchmarks for Air Quality Monitoring in Thailand

We’re open sourcing our haze estimation models!

We're Better With AI, Pt 1: Why And How AI Supercharges Humans

Let’s settle the debate on whether AI is a tool or a threat–humans can leverage AI to supercharge our decisions and abilities in just about everything.

A Brief but Revolutionary History of Data Platforms

What’s the deal with storing data? Over the years, the growing use of data led to the innovation of various storage solutions, including what we now call the data platform–a key asset for any modern enterprise.

Data (alone) won't save our forests. Learnings from local restoration heroes

Rapid solutions are needed to fight deforestation, but we know data is not enough. Here are our learnings from getting down and dirty with groups restoring ecosystems at the frontlines.

We’re on Cloud (Build) 9 with this Dagster secret

Learn how we configure Google’s Cloud Build to achieve continuous deployment of our Dagster pipelines.

Driving Business Growth for Philippine Airlines with a Passenger Analytics Platform

Thinking Machines worked with Philippine Airlines to develop a Customer Data Analytics Platform that processes 20TB of data every day across 12 sources. The platform enables 90% faster insighting - reducing the time spent to generate key marketing reports from 3 weeks to 2 days.

Transforming EastWest Bank’s Operations With a Smart Data Platform

We improved EastWest Bank’s operations and customer experience by automating its transaction reconciliation process for 587 ATMs nationwide and streamlining 2 million monthly customer transactions.

Thinking Machines pushes for open science through the AI4D Research Bank

We’re thrilled to announce our work with UNICEF Venture Fund to build the AI4D (Artificial Intelligence for Development) Research Bank, which will accelerate the development and adoption of effective machine learning (ML) models for development across Southeast Asia.

Arizona State University, Conservation International & Thinking Machines win Climate Change AI Innovation Grant to scale climate smart aquaculture

We are excited to work with Conservation International and Arizona State University to use computer vision and earth observation data in mapping the most suitable aquaculture farms for mangrove restoration in Southeast Asia.

How Computer Vision Can Help Fight Forest Loss

Thinking Machines’ new Eco-Intelligence Solution will use AI to support groups in the Philippines that are protecting and restoring forests and scaling nature-based solutions.

Accelerated Customer Data Cleanup and Network Migration using AI for Globe Telecom

We built a custom Broadband Migration Tool that allowed Globe to automatically process and improve the quality of addresses at scale, resulting in a 6x increase in customer locatability and network matching.

Using Geospatial AI to Monitor Rice Productivity in Cambodia

We trained an ML model to extend rice yield data to over 50x more plots of land in Cambodia, providing a faster, more scalable, and cost-efficient method of measuring productivity for the Asian Development Bank.

ML Ops with Dagster: 5 Key Features for Developing a Continuous Training Pipeline

Consistent Data Preparation, Model Deployment, and Model Retraining are some of the challenges faced when bringing ML systems to production. Find out how we utilized Dagster to tackle these problems and implement a Smart Search Application.

Filipinos top world in these 4 surprising attitudes towards climate change

Filipinos believe tackling climate change will boost the economy. But what’s surprising? They also think the country needs more fossil fuels in the future.

4 Ways Government Can Unlock the Power of AI for Climate and Development

Governments have no time to waste in the climate fight. Here are four actionable takeaways to support AI for development, from building accessible data portals to enabling scalable AI solutions in climate-relevant sectors.

The Shapes of Philippine Streets

Every city has its own unique design and story. Let’s dive into four Philippine cities to learn more about how history and topography have influenced the streets we navigate.

Understanding Data Storage Solutions: Databases vs. Data Warehouses vs Data Lakes

Understand the differences between OLTP Databases, Data Warehouses, and Data Lakes, and when to use which for your business

6 Lessons from Measuring Our Carbon Footprint

As a young tech company that makes no physical products, can our climate impact be worth more than its weight in carbon? We hope so.

Flipping the Philippine climate curve: Can we halve our emissions in 9 years?

Spoiler alert: While the Philippines does have very ambitious emission reduction targets that are aligned with keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees, we are way off track from achieving these.

Thinking Machines Thailand Partners With Techsauce, Launches a Workshop Series on AI and Data for Executives

Thinking Machines Thailand have partnered with Techsauce, the leading source of all tech and business news in Thailand. The partnership aims to produce localized tech and data stories, workshops, and events.

Thinking Machines’ Climate Action Commitment

Being data-driven means taking climate action. We’re trying to find our niche in the climate fight.

How OhMyHome Used Machine Learning for Real Estate Valuation

We built a custom ML model that can estimate the price of any property in Singapore. With only 4% difference against historical sales prices, the model delivers data OhMyHome needs at an unprecedented speed and scale.

Creating a Single Customer View out of Big Messy Data

We worked with LBC to develop a Single Customer View (SCV) that automatically identifies unique customers from daily transactional records, resulting to 40x faster processing and 3.5x higher accuracy.

Thinking Machines and Snowflake Partner up to Accelerate Data Transformation Across Southeast Asia

Thinking Machines and Snowflake are partnering up to accelerate data transformation in Southeast Asia through powerful cloud data platforms and scalable AI solutions.

Thinking Machines accelerates growth with new office in Bangkok

Thinking Machines continues to expand across Southeast Asia with our new Bangkok office!

Tourism in Bangkok: Road to Recovery with Mapbox Movement

While Bangkok’s COVID-19 recovery is slow as lockdowns are reinstated to contain rising cases, Mapbox Movement data shows that some areas in the capital are starting to pick up a year since the onset of the pandemic.

Marvel vs DC Films: A Visual Analysis

Spoiler alert: It’s a rather lopsided battle.

Automating Financial Document Analysis for the World Bank with a Document Intelligence AI Engine

The World Bank aims to better understand local government units’ (LGU) spending patterns and trends in budget execution over a period of four years by examining the LGU’s financial statements collected by Philippines Commission on Audit (COA).

2020 didn’t stop Thailand’s 5G rollout but here’s how access can improve

Thailand's 5G rollout is leading in the region! Here's how geospatial data and AI can increase presence outside of the capital.

Mapping Digital Poverty in the Philippines using AI/Big Data and Machine Learning

How will the digital divide affect our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic? In this final blog in a series with the ADB, we map disparities of wealth and digital infrastructure in the Philippines up to the last mile.

Quarantine in a Multicultural Hub: Exploring Mapbox Movement in Singapore

Successful businesses use geospatial analytics wisely and we’ll tell you why you should start using it too.

Understanding poverty in the Philippines with artificial intelligence

Using publicly accessible datasets, we developed a low-cost AI model to estimate wealth for the entire Philippines and analyzed what geographical factors are associated with wealth levels.

Send Your Friends a Digital Holiday Card With Our AI Holiday Greeter!

Generate your own digital holiday greeting card with artificial intelligence and beautiful data visualization and share it with your loved ones this holiday season!

Thinking Machines wins Best Paper Award at NeurIPS 2020 ML4D Workshop

Thinking Machines presented at NeurIPS 2020 workshops, ML4D and AI + HADR, and won Best Paper at ML4D!

Using Satellite Imagery and Nighttime Lights to Understand the Impact of COVID-19 across Southeast Asian Cities

In this third blog in our series with ADB, we zoomed into three Southeast Asian cities throughout the pandemic to see how nighttime lights have changed alongside lockdown measures and other key data sources.

Got net? Here are the best cities in Southeast Asia for remote work

With Ookla’s new Speedtest dataset, we explore the fastest internet speeds in Southeast Asia this year.

Using AI/Big Data to Analyze Urban Mobility Patterns During the Pandemic

Can we still monitor movement under new constraints? In this second part of a blog series with ADB, we use Waze CCP mobility data to show how traffic flow has changed throughout lockdown in major Philippine cities.

Bridging the Gap: How GeoAI enables better decision-making

GeoAI is helping organizations bring solutions to new heights with spatial insights. Read about four key Computer Vision concepts that make GeoAI possible.

Thinking Machines' geospatial data warehouse is now in closed beta

Geodata Catalog is now in closed beta; sign-up for free and get access to our geospatial data warehouse today!

Empowering ULSSI’s Innovation Team through an AI-powered knowledge system

We worked with ULSSI to create an idea management tool that helps their Innovation team collect, discover, and organize data all in one tool.

How Open-Source Big Data Can Tackle Healthcare Access using CARTO

Identifying high impact health facility locations with CARTO’s BigQuery Tiler and large open-sourced geospatial datasets.

Thinking Machines is now a partner of CARTO

“CARTO and Thinking Machines both believe in the power of geospatial insights for better decisions in a complex world," says Stephanie Sy, our CEO. "We’re very excited to bring better spatial data analytics tools to everyone.”

Mapping New Informal Settlements for Humanitarian Aid through Machine Learning

We developed an AI model to rapidly detect new informal settlements in Colombia, aiding humanitarian groups on the ground respond quicker.

Using Geospatial AI to Support Infrastructure Rollout for the Philippines’ Largest Telco

We worked with Globe Telecom to build an AI model that measures the socioeconomic class of areas across the entire Philippines to assist in their high CAPEX decision making.

Thinking Machines is Mapbox’s partner in the Philippines

We’re excited to announce that we’re partnering up with Mapbox!

How we improved our design process to build runway-ready applications

Making design decisions in Thinking Machines was as hard as picking up an outfit when you’re late for work. Learn how we solved our design dilemmas with Asimov, TM’s design system.

Advanced Statistical Concepts for A/B Testing and Experimentation

We tackle some of the nitty-gritty, advanced statistical concepts that must be addressed by statisticians and data scientists when adopting A/B testing in practice.

The Business Case for A/B Testing

One of the biggest promises of data science is for business owners and executives to be able to understand the causal relationships and fundamental drivers that underpin their business. Find out how A/B tests can be leveraged to do just that and why you should.

Generate Your Own Filipino Christmas Parol-Inspired Digital Greeting Cards using Geospatial Data!

6 Use Cases of Geospatial Analytics That Change Your View of the World

Successful businesses use geospatial analytics wisely and we’ll tell you why you should start using it too.

Can machine learning and satellite imagery help improve humanitarian aid to Venezuelan migrants?

A hard life awaits millions of Venezuelan migrants seeking refuge in neighboring Colombia.

Querying Safely in the (Google) Cloud

Programming in BigQuery may feel very light, but do you have a safety net for when the cloud goes down?

What’s the story? How we taught a deep learning model to understand the topics in thousands of online articles

We built a deep learning word embeddings model that learns nuanced topic relationships by reading the news.

Introducing Geomancer: an open-source library for geospatial feature engineering

Tired of doing all of your geospatial feature engineering from scratch? Don’t fret; we’ve got a magical tool for you!

Huge areas of PHL are still missing from OpenStreetMap, satellite data reveals

There are still a lot of uncharted territories in the Philippines, at least on OpenStreetMap, the world's Wikipedia of Maps. #MapTheGap

Using AI for Automatic Logo Detection on Store Shelves

We rapidly developed a high-performance logo detection model and front-end mobile application that identified our client’s product on retail shelves.

Zero in on the Philippines’ most vulnerable communities – with the click of a mouse

Estimate wealth and poverty for any 18 square kilometer area within a fraction of the time and cost of running a household survey.

Let AI design your holiday cards!

Done making Christmas cards? Why not let an AI do it for you?

Around 30M Filipinos live over 2 hours away from a DOH HIV testing center

Does the Philippines have enough HIV testing facilities to curb one of the world's fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemics? Explore our 3D interactive map.

How did the new one-way-scheme affect BGC’s traffic flow?

The results are mixed.

A whole new ball game: Quantifying changes in NBA basketball over the past 30 years

Using publicly available player statistics, we visualize how the game we love has changed over time.

Faster, easier geographic data cleaning with LinkSight

We built a web app to semi-automate cleaning up inconsistently spelled names of Philippine barangays, municipalities, cities and provinces. Try it out.

How exposed is your barangay to different natural hazards?

The Philippines is one of the most at-risk and vulnerable countries in the world. But the geographical distribution of risks and vulnerabilities within the archipelago is uneven.

How far from the airport can you get in two hours?

Want to know what time you should schedule your flight so your car ride home isn't longer than the actual flight? Click to find out!

When did everything ML get 'deep'? Using fasttext to examine semantic trends in 30 years of NIPS papers

We use word embeddings to look into the evolving landscape of research topics in NIPS, AI’s most prestigious conference, through the years.

How a Digital Logistics Company Used Data to Rethink Operations

A unified and cleaned data pipeline to empower meaningful analysis and optimized business decisions

Mind the gap: A gender parity analysis of UPCAT passers

What are the most female- and male-dominated degree courses in UP? Explore our interactive dashboard to find out.

Spread algorithmic Christmas cheer with our snowflake generator

What happened when we asked a physicist, a compute…ta scientist to make our company Christmas cards?

How We Simplified Time-Tracking with Slack, BigQuery, and a Power BI dashboard

Also known as: time-tracking for lazy people who hate forms.

Kailan ka ikakasal? Four data-driven comebacks to use at your next family reunion

Actually, Tita, the number of Filipinos getting married has declined 15% in the past 10 years. It's part of a nationwide trend.

Harnessing the Potential of Claims Data To Detect Insurance Fraud

Developed a fraud detection model to help identify insurance claims outliers for further investigation.

Effective Targeted Campaigns with Machine Intelligence

Advanced market segmentation using Machine Learning to develop targeted campaigns to improve consumer behavior around payment operations

Using data to reach the Philippines’ most vulnerable children

Data design, prototyping, and development of dashboards to visualize key program targeting and impact measurement metrics.

MAPPED: Danger Zones in Metro Manila's Roads

Which roads and intersections are the most accident prone for motorcycles? Where are pedestrians most vulnerable to be injured? Which routes are dangerous for both?

Avoid These 4 EDSA Southbound Chokepoints

We uncovered potential chokepoints on EDSA Southbound using Waze data to show you exactly where you shouldn’t be during weekdays.

Making Panel Discussions Memorable with Data Visualization

Minutes are the default method of documenting and summarizing meetings. But they’re also about as interesting to read as your social media's terms and conditions.

This is what 24 hours of Metro Manila holiday traffic looks like

We're excited to be working with the MMDA to use real-time Waze data to analyze, diagnose, and address traffic congestion in Metro Manila.

Build your own maps with this open source D3 Philippine cartogram

Make your own Philippine cartogram with our free resource.

Makeover Your Charts with These 5 Design Hacks

Small tweaks can make a big difference when it comes to data design. Here are five case studies from our recent data storytelling workshop.

Dots are people too: Learnings from Information+

Our Data Designer, writes about what she learned from attending Information+, one of the few data visualization related conferences that targets both researchers and practitioners.

Off the map: An alternative way of visualizing the Philippine election results

Why did we use a cartogram instead of a normal map for visualizing the election results?

A second look at PNP crime statistics: Taking population into consideration

A look at the number of index crimes per 10,000 residents for 15 Philippine cities.

Voters or Robots? Evaluating the Twitter popularity of the presidential candidates

How many of the tweets about the Philippine presidential candidates were likely posted by Twitter bots?

Talks from our 'Humans + Machines' artificial intelligence conference

We're sharing the presentations delivered by the four speakers at our Feb. 19 artificial intelligence conference in BGC.

5 Ways You Already Rely On Artificial Intelligence

Sure, Siri is a long way from being Scarlett Johansson. But she’s a real-world example of how artificial intelligence has crept into daily life.

Building a Twitter Big Data Pipeline with Python, Cassandra & Redis

We use some of our favorite tech to build a data ingestion, storage, and analysis infrastructure.

More than 57,000 Metro Manila Pedestrians Hit by Vehicles Since 2005

What types of vehicles have hit or killed the most pedestrians in Metro Manila over the past ten years?

The Most Accident-prone Streets and Cities in Metro Manila (2014)

Part of our continuing series on road safety. Which roads and cities reported the highest number of persons injured or killed in traffic incidents in 2014?

Building Beautiful Plots with Matplotlib

Our data science lead Stef Sy shows you how to generate colorful line, bar, scatter plots and more using just a few lines of code from the Matplotlib library.

When are you most in danger on the road?

How likely is it that if you get in an accident on your daily commute, it will result in someone getting hurt or killed?

We Are Thinking Machines

The Thinking Machines team and philosophy.