It is based on more than 22, 000 financial statements (including those of businesses and their owners) from over 6, 600 businesses distributed across industries and sales ranges in the U.S. The predictive model is aimed at helping banks quantify and standardize their credit risk assessments, helping companies perform risk exposure due diligence on partner companies, and helping private businesses evaluate their own creditworthiness.

FORBES: Private-company credit risk shows signs of improving

"You can sometimes look at a slumping equity price and see trouble coming, but until KMV's model came along it was impossible to quantify the risk, " says Campbell.

FORBES: Default-risk bookies

Of course, the model only looks at fundamentals and cannot quantify data such as the havoc caused by crises in the Islamic world and their effect on crude oil prices.

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Having established the reality of his point, he then designed a mathematical model that tried to take into account and quantify sources of error.

ECONOMIST: Just how reliable are scientific papers?

But soon after, I developed a novel mathematical model which can be used by doctors and environmental specialists to quantify the effect of the pollutants on the lung function as measured by the peak expiratory flow rate-- which is essentially how much a person can breathe out in one breath.

WHITEHOUSE: Energy and Environment Latest News | The White House

We would like this USTR report to become a model for similar official diplomatic reports on Internet freedom and our trading partners to help policymakers quantify how barriers to information flows online impact trade.

FORBES: WCIT, TPP, Russia PNTR: Growing Recognition of Internet Freedom As A Trade Issue