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New Company Seeks to Bring Semantic Context To Numbers

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the quick-create-another-standards-body dept.

A new company, True#, is seeking to bring extensive semantic context to numbers to give them obvious meanings just as certain words have obvious meanings to most readers. "Most of us can probably recognize 3.14159 and the conceptual baggage it carries, but how many of us would recognize 58.44? (That's a mole of sodium chloride, in grams, for the curious.) And the response that would work for words — look it up — doesn't work so conveniently for numbers. Only one of the top-10 hits in Google refers to salt, and Bing fails entirely (though it does offer 'Women's Sexy Mini Skirts by VENUS'). Clearly, we haven't figured out how to make the Web work for numbers in the same way it does for words."

4 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Sig Figs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, the accepted weight is 58.443 thats why Bing didn't show any NaCl results.

  2. First you need a semantic context by davidwr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Search58.44 and chemistry and you'll find what you are looking for a lot faster.

    This will be much more useful if it allows for approximate numbers and widely-used but inaccurate numbers. "1.4 math" should return 7/5, sqrt(2), and a bunch of other things. "3.142857 and math" should return "22/7" and "approximate value of pi" and probably a lot more.

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  3. Seems to work just fine by gt6062b · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'll bite.

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mole+of+sodium+chloride+in+grams - seems to work just fine searching for "mole of sodium chloride in grams" and also works without the "in grams".

    http://www.bing.com/search?q=mole+of+sodium+chloride+in+grams - works for Bing too.

    http://www.bing.com/search?q=sodium+chloride+molecular+weight - also works.

    http://www.bing.com/search?q=58.44+science - "58.44 science" 6th one down. Better results from google.

    Why would anyone just type in a number and expect it to know that you want the molecular weight of NaCl? If you add a little bit of context to your search, it magically works.

  4. Re:Web searches aren't THAT bad... by haifastudent · · Score: 5, Informative

    And when web searches fail to find what you need, Wikipedia often has you covered:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/58.44

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