Altair Research · Methodology
Sources & context.
Definitions, dates and limitations behind our research and educational material. The details are here when you need them.
Reading the work
Source & scope
Look for the original agency, study, filing or other document. Check the population and measure beside the claim. An employer survey, a personal finance survey and an administrative payment record describe different things.
Date & change
The date of a dataset is not necessarily the date of an article. A historical figure stays historical when an article is updated. A change in definitions or coverage can make a year-to-year comparison misleading.
Author & reviewer
Article pages identify the author and reviewer for that article, alongside publication and review information. A leadership biography supplies professional background; it does not imply that person wrote or reviewed every page.
Calculation & assumption
A result depends on its inputs. Distinguish an observed figure from an estimate, and a mathematical illustration from a forecast. A hypothetical return is not an expected investment result.
Important distinctions
Education and a recommendation
General material can help frame a question. It cannot account for your full circumstances or replace the terms of an individual advisory, tax, legal or insurance engagement.
A scenario and a client story
A hypothetical scenario is labeled as such. It illustrates a decision without claiming that a person achieved a result or that another reader will achieve it.
Missing and zero
Information that was not reported or could not be established is not evidence of a zero value. A gap should stay a gap rather than become a precise-sounding claim.
Public data example
Physician employment & wages
May 2024 BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics estimates provide a public-data example of physician employment and wages. The 15 named physician occupations are listed below.
The table reports national mean annual wages and estimated national employment for that reporting period. These employee estimates exclude self-employed workers and do not measure an attending-only population, total compensation, personal wealth, or practice revenue.
These estimates illustrate differences across specialties. The table excludes the two residual “all other” groups and the broader physician and surgeon totals.
| Occupation | Employment | Mean annual wage |
|---|---|---|
| Pediatricians, general SOC 29-1221 | 42,960 | $222,340 |
| Family medicine physicians SOC 29-1215 | 107,950 | $256,830 |
| General internal medicine physicians SOC 29-1216 | 66,640 | $262,710 |
| Physicians, pathologists SOC 29-1222 | 11,800 | $266,020 |
| Psychiatrists SOC 29-1223 | 24,800 | $269,120 |
| Obstetricians and gynecologists SOC 29-1218 | 19,900 | $281,130 |
| Neurologists SOC 29-1217 | 7,700 | $286,310 |
| Ophthalmologists, except pediatric SOC 29-1241 | 12,110 | $301,500 |
| Emergency medicine physicians SOC 29-1214 | 33,680 | $320,700 |
| Anesthesiologists SOC 29-1211 | 41,890 | $336,640 |
| Dermatologists SOC 29-1213 | 10,080 | $347,810 |
| Radiologists SOC 29-1224 | 26,290 | $359,820 |
| Orthopedic surgeons, except pediatric SOC 29-1242 | 14,160 | $365,060 |
| Cardiologists SOC 29-1212 | 18,020 | $432,490 |
| Pediatric surgeons SOC 29-1243 | 1,050 | $450,810 |
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2024. Archived April 2, 2025 release, Table 1. National cross-industry employment and mean annual wage estimates. The table uses published means, not the suppressed upper wage percentiles.
- BLS estimates are subject to sampling and nonsampling error. See the OEWS definitions and survey methodology for wage coverage and the treatment of self-employment.
The research inventory
The homepage’s 27M+ figure reflects Altair’s May 8, 2026 ingestion inventory: approximately 12.2 million CMS Medicare records, 7.17 million NPPES provider records, 5.54 million CMS Open Payments records, and 2.26 million BLS wage records, plus smaller datasets. These are source records from different periods and populations, with multiple observations per provider. They are not a count of unique physicians or a live counter.
The same inventory groups the research inputs into nine sources: six federal datasets (CMS Medicare utilization, BLS OEWS, CMS Open Payments, NPPES, Census ACS PUMS, and Federal Student Aid) plus publications from ACGME, NRMP, and AAMC. AAMC workforce and student-debt reports are counted together. These are source groups, not nine federal agencies.
The 26-specialty figure describes Altair’s medical-specialty taxonomy. Coverage and the available measures differ across sources and specialties.
The homepage dot field shows proportional shares of this documented source-table inventory. Its 1,000 equal dots are allocated across Medicare, NPPES, Open Payments, BLS, and other documented records, using rounded inventory counts and the largest-remainder method. The other group combines approximately 125,000 PDF-extracted records, 5,500 Census records, and 117 Federal Student Aid records. The display is an approximate composition of the historical inventory, not a geographic map or a live data feed. Altair’s research platform and analysis workflows are developed in-house, with AI inference configured to run on private infrastructure. The underlying language models include third-party model families; the site does not claim proprietary foundation-model training or automated investment advice.
- Altair data-source inventory and specialty taxonomy, May 2026 snapshot; internal research pipeline and model-serving configuration. Medicare utilization: 2013–2023; NPPES registry: 2007–2026; CMS Open Payments: 2018–2024; BLS OEWS: 2011–2024. Additional records include medical-education publications, Census data, and federal education-loan data.
Questions & corrections
Send the page URL, the statement in question and a source or explanation of the issue. For a personal account question, use your established client contact instead of including private account information in an editorial inquiry.