Slashdot Mirror
New Company Seeks to Bring Semantic Context To Numbers
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."
1337 returns EXACTLY what I expected.
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").
Bing seems far superior to my hormon^W^Wme.
Actually, the accepted weight is 58.443 thats why Bing didn't show any NaCl results.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
So, put in the (numerical) answer and it gives you the question?
Thank God Douglass Adams didn't know about this.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Shhhh... Since when has making sense had anything to do with raising money from VC's? Especially when you can use the word crowdsourcing in your pitch.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
When I searched "1234" on google and bing, the top results are about that Feist song. Thank goodness it doesn't mention anything about it being my root admin password and my luggage combination--hey! Where did my bag go? It was just here, and why is there a sudden spike in my internet tra#%^W&*s%!$AF{:
---[CONNECTION LOST]---
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I have had this need when reverse engineering and debugging algorithms in software. There are magic numbers in the formulas and I have no idea what they mean.
Additionally, if something like this was rolled into a more generalized search algorithm, it could be used the other way around. Google could know, for example, that a paper with the number 58.44 a lot of times is probably about NaCl even if it is not mentioned explicitly.
Maybe Bing learns from previous searches.
...by google!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I'm sure you've heard the one about the linguist who was walking across campus with his girlfriend when they saw six descriptivists beating up a prescriptivist. She turned to him in horror and asked, "Aren't you going to help?"
"No," he replied, "I think six is enough."