Indeed, Columbus has dozens of small startups specializing in big data. One is Farsite, a seven-person company that builds statistical models for retail and medical clients. To prove the validity of its analytics capacity, Farsite correctly predicted five of the six top Oscar winners, missing only best director. (They chose Steven Spielberg instead of Ang Lee.) “We beat out all of the data-driven resources, including Nate Silver’sFiveThirtyEight,” boasts Farsite co-founder Michael Gold.