The Science Behind a Better Deal

We are a bunch of like-minded nerds who should probably get out more, but instead we like to spend our time letting some pretty advanced mathematics loose on everyday consumer problems.

What started off as an experiment by some of the engineers in our parent company, has become something of a crusade to unravel the more complicated of life's financial decisions to allow the average consumer to make an informed choice.

Mobile phone tariffs, or plans according to some providers, were an obvious target, with some networks offering over a hundred different contract tariffs alone, nevermind Pay As You Go and SIM-only. These can vary wildly, and what should be a simple selection based on your user habits has become a minefield of hidden charges, caps and bundled deals. How do you choose the cheapest plan for you?

We have solved this problem by implementing novel research in fuzzy discrete global optimisation theory carried out by Professor Les Hatton of Kingston University, London.

The computations necessary to find the cheapest mobile phone tariff for a typical user profile currently require around two hundred million calculations. However, even with such sophistication, our implementation takes only a few seconds.