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A Look At the Wolfram Alpha "Search Engine"

Posted by kdawson on from the computational-knowledge-engine dept.

An anonymous reader points out a ReadWriteWeb piece on an hour-long demo of Wolfram|Alpha (which we discussed at its announcement). Stephen Wolfram does not like to call it a "search engine," preferring instead the term "computational knowledge engine." It will open to the public in May. "The hype around Wolfram|Alpha, the next 'Google killer' from the makers of Mathematica, has been building over the last few weeks. Today, we were lucky enough to attend a one-hour web demo with Stephen Wolfram, and from what we've seen, it definitely looks like it can live up to the hype — though, because it is so different from traditional search engines, it will definitely not be a 'Google killer.' According to Stephen Wolfram, the goal of Alpha is to give everyone access to expert knowledge and the data that a specialist would be able to compute from this information."

11 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. This could work. by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 5, Informative

    It seems they are not trying to index the web, nor trying to replace Google.

    Instead they are trying to compute knowledge-worthy data from a small subset of the web using natural language algorithms.

    Queries like "What is the melting point of iron?" are processed and answered, instead of just trying to score pages based on keywords.

    This could really work.

    --
    .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
    1. Re:This could work. by Rik+Rohl · · Score: 4, Informative

      er...

      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=What+is+the+melting+point+of+iron%3F&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

    2. Re:This could work. by alpayerturkmen · · Score: 2, Informative

      Man you should definitely check if Google answers your question before posting here. http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=What+is+the+melting+point+of+iron%3F

      --
      Alpay Curious...
    3. Re:This could work. by mcrbids · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Wolfie" Steve Wolfram HAS developed a rather successful software for mathematical modeling. You may have heard of it: "Mathematica". He also wrote a book called "A new kind of Science" which lays out some interesting ideas based on what are called "Cellular Automata" - basically a simple algorithm turned into a loop.

      Certain, very simple algorithms appear to be rather respectable pseudo-random number generators, and he uses the fact that they are (repeatable) pseudo-random number generators to be a plus rather than a minus.

      I'd like to see some challenging of his ideas, specifically, just how "random" is the output of these simple algorithms? Are they really as incompressible as they seem? It strikes me that there are only so many states possible in a narrow, N-bit wide field that he uses like a register, and thus this would severely limit the "randomness" in the result to being far less than claimed.

      In his book, he went too far - he even suggested that cellular automata explain all the phenomenon of the universe! - and for that, his other, useful ideas will tend to be dismissed, even if he IS right.

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    4. Re:This could work. by will_die · · Score: 2, Informative

      Using your melting point of iron on google gives the answer 1811K right at the top along with a link source.
      Alpha is going to have to be alot better which would require human intervention which leads to a Yahoo type directory and that has alot less entries.

    5. Re:This could work. by AlXtreme · · Score: 3, Informative

      He also wrote a book called "A new kind of Science" which lays out some interesting ideas based on what are called "Cellular Automata" - basically a simple algorithm turned into a loop.

      Except that most of the ideas on CA that Wolfram used (borrowed?) were already well-known. "A New Kind of Science", it wasn't.

      --
      This sig is intentionally left blank
  2. Re:athe real question... by balloonhead · · Score: 3, Informative

    You do realise women don't piss out their vagina? There is more than one hole. Think bowling ball.

    --
    This idea was invented by Shampoo.
  3. Re:search engine that supports pregex by Stan+Vassilev · · Score: 4, Informative

    You'll be waiting for a long time. It's impossible to index a database for matching via regex, therefore searches on such an engine would be inordinately expensive to process.

    Heh, check the Syntax and Examples here: http://www.google.com/codesearch

    I mean no offense, however if one can't do it in 5 mins with with an off-the-shelf SQL database, doesn't mean no one can do it :).

  4. Re:Google started the ball rolling... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    i.e.
    abbr. Latin
    id est (that is)

  5. Sorta... by RulerOf · · Score: 4, Informative

    is there a way to blacklist all the Ubuntu forums in my Google profile?

    Keep track of the domain names of the sites with this info, and then

    [searchquery] -stupidforum1.com -stupidforum2.com -stupidforum3.com

    And so on. I used to use the same to pull expert-s/exchange results out of my Google queries, and then they started giving Google referred page hits free answers, so it's been a while since I used it.

    And yes, there's probably a better method than what I've brought up, but it does work.

    --
    Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
    1. Re:Sorta... by thePig · · Score: 2, Informative

      That works too...
      I had many many queries which I was redirected to EE, and then I found that answers were not available - and skipped the page.
      Actually, I found answers to most queries from other sites, otherwise I would have paid them to get the answers.
      Only now, after you had mentioned that it is there below, did I notice that the answers are infact available.
      So, I guess it is a real working idea.

      --
      rajmohan_h@yahoo.com