Wolfram|Alpha

[Weregoose]

I've been an avid fan of the goings-on at Wolfram Research since I was in middle school, so it should be no surprise how thrilled I am about what's just been released: It's called Wolfram|Alpha – here's the initial announcement, and a video about it. If you'd rather have it in a nutshell, then that'd be where the guys in Star Trek start a sentence with "Computer...," ask a question, and then receive an answer that was computed to match their query; in short, this claims to eventually be able to do "what people thought computers would be able to do 50 years ago." Nonetheless, they still call this a work-in-progress with a 20+ year timeline; forgive it if it can't demonstrate what country has the most number of sugar plantations, but it can tell you the current distance from the Moon to the Earth (which isn't a constant).

Just as Mathematica is able to break down, analyze, and re-synthesize the primitive components of any expression symbolically—which is how a mathematician might do it if he were as fast as a computer and permitted merely to rearrange variables—Wolfram|Alpha seeks to quantify and organize the information that is already present on the web. But, this isn't a search engine. A simple search engine can only store and recall the words on a web page and can easily tell you which of those millions of sites contain the words that you have typed into your search; it's only slightly better than the file-searching programs that come standard with most computers in that it has an awareness of subject matter (via tags) and synonyms. The point is, you know better than to ask those things questions like, "What color is the sun?" and expect a meaningful response.

Wolfram|Alpha was constructed to get over this obstacle, and does so by digesting your queries more like a human would: through abstraction (converting explicit, meaningless words into implicit, meaningful ideas – symbolically) and intuition (using abundant factual knowledge coupled with past experiences to attempt to clarify context). By drawing on these traits that are deep-rooted in our methods of communicating with one another, the computer now has a better shot at interpreting—and understanding—much of what thousands of computer users have tried vainly to convey for so many years.

Some sample questions I've been feeding it are:

• How old is Bill Clinton?
  
• Who was the fifth president?
  
• What does the Greek flag look like?
  
• When is the next leap year?
  
• What is a dovetail?
  
• How much is .002 cents?
  
• How far is the Washington Monument from Nebraska?
  
• What is sixth power of two plus two?
  
• Who is Cory Doctorow?
  
• Mix red and blue.
  
• NIntegrate[3 x^2 - 8 x + 5, {x, 0, 21}]
  
• What is Unicode for the ampersand?
  
• Expand (2x+3)(4x-1).
  
• Show me a dodecahedron.
  
• log(20/gamma(log(2))²)²/log(4)²
  

[darkstone knight]

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=unitedti.org

cool

[Eeems]

I tried asking it what it's purpose was and the connection failed

[elfprince13]

I post this on my Facebook wall on Friday:

"As far as I'm concerned....still not ready for the big time. It also failed to tell me how many toothpaste companies offer mint as flavor."

along with the following link: http://www43.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=wha...f+human+toenail

[bananaman]

It wins

[Eeems]

wow, it does win

[Mapar007]

0x5, that's cool.

[elfprince13]

88mph

[Mapar007]

http://www43.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Texas+Instruments

[TheStorm]

[thornahawk]

I always was skeptical about this even when it was just being announced... as expected, it has no problem on mathematical questions, but as for other questions, well...

Anyway... it blows.

thornahawk

[elfprince13]

hahaha. nice.

[Ph34r_my_l33t_skillz]

Hehe. It does win.
http://www55.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Wha...aden+swallow%3F

[Eeems]

oh wow, that was an epic win

[IAmACalculator]

So how come it can figure out the airspeed velocity of an unladed European swallow, but not an African one?

[Ph34r_my_l33t_skillz]

Maybe the people who made it have never been to Africa?

[Mapar007]

[Flofloflo]

http://www80.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=why...+cross+the+road

I tried asking what the scouter said about his power level but it didn't work though:P But it's an awesome thing anyways. Might actually use this every know and then.

[Graphmastur]

http://www80.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+old+are+you%3F

[Ph34r_my_l33t_skillz]

Wow... this thing is good. Google can't find Chuck Norris, but Wolfram|Alpha can.