It looks at real-life repair data for one full calendar year on 10 model years worth of vehicles, weighing the frequency of repairs and the cost of those repairs equally.

FORBES: How To Predict What Will Go Wrong With Your Car Down The Road

CarMD looked at real-life repair data for one full calendar year on 2002-2012 vehicles and discovered that different brands tend to have a unique set of problems and common failures.

FORBES: What That Dreaded 'Check Engine' Repair Will Cost You

The focus on data is intentional: While other classes teach ag students how to repair combines or learn the proper chemical mixes of common fertilizers, students in agricultural economist Kevin Moore's "Returning to the Farm" class create business plans using financial information from their own family farms.

NPR: Future Heads Of Family Farms Dig Into Financials

It also provides surveillance to help hospitals manage data that identifies and tracks healthcare associated infections and automate central supply workflow with instrument, repair and sterilization management.

FORBES: #1,871 CareFusion

He uses as an example of data making smarter decisions the cascade of decisions to be made when a vehicle needs a minor repair.

FORBES: How To Manage One Million Vehicles With Big Data

To determine the average amount consumers might pay to keep their new cars in operating condition, we used 2008 repair estimates calculated over a five-year period by Vincentric, an auto-industry data-analysis company.

FORBES