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Test Driving the Wolfram Alpha

Posted by kdawson on from the know-what-i-know-if-you-know-what-i-mean dept.

SilverMind writes in to note a blog entry at Byte Size Biology describing in detail a few hours spent with Wolfram Alpha (which we have discussed before). "After playing around with Wolfram Alpha for a few hours, I can safely say the following: it's different, it's incomplete, it's idiosyncratic, and it's funky cool. And no, it will not dethrone Google, nor does it aim to do so."

7 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Needs a better name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    How the hell am I supposed to "Wolfram Alpha" something? No one will ever say that.

    1. Re:Needs a better name by Ilgaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Can you say "Observables for the Analysis of Event Shapes in e+ e- Annihilation and Other Processes" without taking a breath? Mr. Wolfram can :)

      Seriously, that is not a general search engine or even engine as we understand today. It is something else. It is the click happy IT media which compares it to Google and I am sure people at Wolfram research either laughs or cries because of it.

  2. AI exercise? by moon3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Understanding written sentences and answering them by using logical cognition is part of what successful AI has to achieve..

    Something that Wolfram might not directly telling you.

  3. Not A Search Engine by RoFLKOPTr · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those of you who aren't gonna RTFA, I would like to reiterate something that is stated in TFA, because it seems, from reading comments on previous articles about Wolfram|Alpha, that people think this is a search engine and is trying to compete with the likes of Google and whatnot. I also get this from a couple articles from various tech sites that I've read who search for... things... on W|A and compare the results to Google and claim that Google is superior.

    People, W|A is not a search engine in the conventional sense. It is more of a knowledgebase. It is a computational engine. Rather than finding websites that tell you about what you're trying to learn about, W|A gives you the information you're looking for on their site, pulled from a large 20-someodd-year-old database of verified scientific facts that began with Wolfram Mathematica. If the info you're looking for isn't directly present in the database, W|A will compute it for you if it has the necessary data dependencies. W|A is not the same as Google and is not trying to compete with Google, so to those of please stop trying to pass off side-by-side comparisons between W|A and Google as journalism. That's not to say, though, that Google won't try to buy them out or even start up their own academic knowledgebase to compete with Wolfram... and yes, that would be Google entering Wolfram's domain, not the other way around. [/rant]

    Anyways, I think W|A looks awesome and I will surely poke around when it launches on May 18 (I think... correct me if I'm wrong please).

  4. Re:Video of Alpha in action by tromtone · · Score: 5, Informative
    I have preview access and just tried it.

    Like other singers, it lists his full name, date of birth, place of birth, and a timeline of his life. There are no events on the timeline, and it extends all the way until 2010, so apparently he's at least got one more year to try to top Never Gonna Give You Up.

    By the way, here's a screen capture video of me putting this search into Wolfram Alpha.

  5. Alpha? by Znooptree · · Score: 5, Funny

    When Google get their hands on this, it will be Wolfram Beta forever.

  6. Re:Which Wolfram Alpha by h4rdc0d3 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It is a reference to a pair of planets named in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - Seti Alpha V and Seti Alpha VI.

    I won't explain any more in case you have not seen the movie, though if you haven't, what are you doing in here? How did you get past security? ;)