Today's' Spokesman Review business story of note was the one (by Tom Sowa) on the newly developed software tool called the Anomalator which is being used to analyze complex financial market data.

Spokane-based V-Indicator Analytics LLC licensed advanced visualization and sorting software developed by Battelle labs down in the TriCities to produce the tool. Here is a slide that shows how the software is able to track performance and returns produced by any number of fund managers.

In part because it was developed by a national/private lab, the tool has to be promoted as having a wide public benefit. In this case, it's described in PR as helping regulators ferret out nasty anomalies in the markets.

The slide here shows a line graph for several fund managers, including Bernard Madoff, king of the supersized Ponzi Scheme. Said V-Indicator President Bud Sheppard: Anyone looking at how Madoff's fund returns were "doing" in that time frame would instantly conclude something was very odd. There would be no way Madoff's asset funds would have performed like that during that period of market volatility.

So that's the public benefit of the Anomalator. Sheppard and his colleagues hope to go well beyond that, adding applications so that the tool can be used in health care montoring, federal education grant management, and assorted other possible uses.  

As the story noted, the tool can display performances of funds or thousands of fund managers in line graphs, or, in other configurations, as dots spread over time. .... All of this is a happy marriage of smart PNNL-inspired tech wizardry with Sheppard's ability to gather up the right layers of data.

Keep on eye on that company. It has some potential.

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