TRYING to predict price spikes of food in poor countries seems like something the World Bank might do. So it was a tad ambitious for a gaggle of geeks to volunteer a weekend to work on it. The project was just one of many put forward by charities, which inspired around 80 statisticians, computer scientists and data-visualisation experts to participate in a "data dive" on July 26th-28th in London. Forecasting food prices was set out by Oxfam, a British charity. Other nonprofits in need of number-crunching included Hampshire County Council, to improve care for children with special needs. A coalition of charities in Tameside, in the north of England, wanted to help its members raise funds. HelpAge International, a charity for the elderly, aimed to create an index comparing the treatment of old people globally.

On Friday the groups made their appeals and the assorted geeks in T-shirts and jeans chose their projects and reached for their laptops. On Saturday the teams worked for 15 hours fueled on coffee, cookies and (after dark) beer. The most dedicated were eventually forced out at 10pm from the offices of Mozilla, the organisation behind the Firefox browser, where the "data dive" was held. Some left the office but ended up working through the night.

The participants were a global mix of specialities and nationalities that defy categorisation. Only a little more than half were British, by one rough reckoning, and a few had flown in from France, Germany and Hungary. The average age was perhaps 35, yet silver-haired gents mingled amid young turks with nose-rings. Around a fifth of participants were women.

The skill level was extraordinarily high. Among those poring over data on child disabilities was Sam Leach, a British cosmologist who recently returned to London after eight years at a research lab in Italy. Next to him sat Peter Passaro, an American neuroscientist who supports his research at the University of Sussex by doing data-science for digital advertising firms. He is even organising another "data dive" in September to crunch information on the global financial crisis.

Getting PhDs and data specialists to donate their skills to charities is the idea behind the event's organizer, DataKind UK, an offshoot of the American nonprofit group. It is the brainchild of Jake Porway, a statistician who left his job at the New York Times to co-found the group, which has hosted numerous events in America and Britain (as we profiled in an article last year).

It's an easy draw, he says. The data-geeks realise they have special skills but are frustrated merely helping banks earn more or luring people to click on ads. DataKind gives them an outlet to use their talents for philanthropic purposes. This weekend's event, for example, had to turn away around 80 people for lack of space, explained Kaitlin Thaney, who runs "open science" projects at Mozilla.

By midday on Sunday, the teams presented their results. Jack Harrison, who works at the British Ordnance Survey, a mapping company, unveiled an excellent quadrant chart showing countries that treat the elderly best, based on the statistical and graphical work of Marc-Ismael Akodjenou, a senior research engineer at BSkyB, a broadcasting and telecoms company. HelpAge's Attila Kulcsar was stunned by the result.