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Epona Science: Revolutionizing Horse Racing with Pachyderm
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Agriculture
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Machine Condition Monitoring
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Data Science Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Epona Science is a company that specializes in buying, breeding, and identifying the best racehorses in the world. The racehorse business is a traditional industry where buyers often rely on pedigree or trusted breeders' instincts to choose horses. However, Epona Science believes that these are not the best predictors of success. They aim to revolutionize the industry by using machine learning, statistical analysis, and science. They have discovered that factors such as the horse's entire genetic profile and lineage, its height and gait, and even the size of its heart can make a significant difference in its performance. However, gathering all this data, cleaning it, standardizing it, and getting it into a consistent format that their machine learning models can train on is a significant challenge. The data comes from various sources worldwide, including x-rays, genetic profiles, and track records from previous races.
About The Customer
Epona Science is a company that specializes in the horse racing industry. They focus on buying, breeding, and identifying the best racehorses in the world. With every thoroughbred being a multi-million dollar investment, the stakes are high. Epona Science aims to revolutionize the traditional horse racing industry by using machine learning, statistical analysis, and science. They believe that factors such as the horse's entire genetic profile and lineage, its height and gait, and even the size of its heart can make a significant difference in its performance. Epona Science is committed to providing buyers and breeders with the best information possible to give them an edge in picking the next legendary champion.
The Solution
Epona Science chose Pachyderm to help them deal with their data challenges. Pachyderm stood out for its ability to handle everything from data lineage, data transformation and versioning, to containerization. The platform's versioning and provenance tools allow Epona's team to roll backwards and forwards, looking at what changed, when, and why. This is crucial for their sensitive models, as they often need to conduct a detailed forensic analysis to figure out where the model went wrong so they can fix it quickly. Pachyderm also offers more flexibility than alternatives like Airflow, which are more rigid and not designed for Kubernetes first. The platform allows Epona to easily string together a series of independent and isolated tools into a smooth pipeline. This has changed the way they do business, as they had to run everything in isolation in the past. Now, their model development throughput is effectively continuous. Every single model they have and every sample, especially genetics samples, runs through the pipeline, gets tested, and uploaded to the website in minutes.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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