Wolfram Alpha vs. Google — Results Vary

wjousts writes "Technology Review has an article comparing various search results from Wolfram Alpha and Google. Results vary. For example, searching 'Microsoft Apple' in Alpha returns data comparing both companies stock prices, whereas Google top results are news stories mentioning both companies. However, when searching for '10 pounds kilograms,' Alpha rather unhelpfully assumes you want to multiply 10 pounds by 1 kilogram, whereas Google directs you to sites for metric conversions. Change the query to '10 pounds in kilograms' and both give you the result you'd expect (i.e. 4.536 kg)."

Comments

Well, of course

[truthsearch]

Alpha is meant to interpret natural language to figure out an answer. "Microsoft Apple" and "10 pounds kilograms" aren't natural language questions or common phrases. Those would be keyword searches, which is what you'd type into Google. Try "Compare Microsoft to Apple" or "How many kilograms are in 10 pounds" and you'd be using Alpha more appropriately.

Each system is a tool. If you don't use the tool as described you won't get the results you're looking for.

Wat. Wolfram Alpha is not even a search engine.

[Jugalator]

Stupid "face off" story.

WA doesn't compete with Google.

WA works with structured data sets and natural language queries to come up with replies, Google searches the web. WA won't do shit with a query like "digital camera reviews", but Google will. Google won't do shit if asked to calculate answers based on statistics, WA will.

Re:Conversions

[RNLockwood]

Google: 16 in hex
result: 0x01

Gotta ask the right question!

Re:Conversions

[swilver]

Try: 255 in base 16
Result: 0xFF

Re:this just in

[Bakkster]

Google - search for websites.
Wolfram - search for answers.

I'd put it slightly differently:
Google - search for information
Alpha - search for data

However you state it, though, there's definitely a different niche for each. Alpha won't 'kill' Google on everything, but for some forms of research it will be ideal.

Re:explicit phrasing

[lxs]

"So if you want 10 pounds in kilograms, what exactly is the trouble with actually writing those three (counting the space) additional characters?"

Pavlovian conditioning.
Search engines have for the past decade consistently ignored grammar and thrown out those small additional words, often with a stern admonishment to the user that half their query is being ignored.

Re:this just in

[thejynxed]

Bah, leave it up to Slashcode to mangle the key, it should read:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USBSTOR\(your_usb_device_description\instance_id_number)\Device Parameters\Classpnp\UserRemovalPolicy REG_DWORD 0x00000002

Sorry for the double post.

Here's the difference

[harlows_monkeys]

Google for "definition of mathematical proof" (without the quotes). The #1 hit usually is a link to the site of a well-known usenet kook who thinks he's proved FLT, disproved the Rieman Hypothesis, proved P=NP, can factor numbers in constant time, and has found a contradiction in Galois theory (this is just a partial list of his accomplishments), and is being suppressed by a world wide conspiracy of mathematicians--whom he is soon going to take down by destroying the University system so they all lose tenure. He also suspects that many top mathematicians may be aliens (from space), trying to destroy humanity.

I don't have access to WolframAlpha, so have no idea what it would answer for "definition of mathematical proof", but I'd bet a large amount that it will not give a link to the aforementioned kook site.

Google is a web search engine. It's job, which it does very well, is to index the web, and to find sites that appear relevant to a query, and then rank those based on how important they appear to be judged by what other sites reference them. The users of the web find crackpots more interesting than mathematicians, so kook math sites rank high.

WolframAlpha is not a web search engine. It's job is to work with a large database of data that was collected and vetted by people for accuracy, and use that database to derive answers to questions.

You can't meaningfully compare Google and WolframAlpha, because what they are meant to do is so different.