Wolfram Alpha

[veredus]

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/wolfram-alpha-veil-lifted/

Anyone gotten a chance to play with this? Sounds really interesting. Would love to know if it actually works as advertised.

From what I understand, basically it's kind of like a search engine but you ask questions and it gives answers. Like if you asked "How high is Mt Everest?" instead of giving links back would just actually tell you how high it is. i tried to read up on it but would love to hear from someone who has actually gotten to play with it.

[Chimpy]

Stephen Wolfram may be one of the 5 smartest people alive right now, but just about everything that isn't Mathematica that comes out of him or his company right now seems to be a lot of hype with less substance than one would care for.

Conceptually this sounds interesting, but I am skeptical about it, and I tend to give Wolfram a lot more leeway than other people do as I have known quite a few people that work there (and have applied for a number of jobs there over the years) since it is a local company.

I might plunk around with it one of these days.

[sidereal]

The Segway of search engines.

I just typed 'How high is mount Everest' into google.

Mount Everest — Elevation: 8,848 metres (29,029 FT) Ranked 1st
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest - More sources »

Incredible!

[veredus]

So I used a rather simple example, sue me. But ya the segway comment will probably be appropriate but still, it does sound cool.

[MahrinSkel]

So I started throwing oddball "how many/much" questions at Google.

1 mile = 63 360 inches
1 year = 31 556 926 seconds (note this is the number of seconds in an orbital year, not a calendar year)
1 short ton = 907 184.74 grams
1 nautical mile = 185 200 centimeters
1 lightyear = 9.4605284 × 10¹⁷ centimeters

All of these were thrown out by Google's "Calculator" function as the first result in response to a "plain english" query of the default search box.

I found some other interesting things on that "Features" page I hadn't known about, like using a tilde ("~") to search for synonyms of the search phrase in the same query.  Searching for the default "~fast food" example gave me the Wikipedia page for Fast Food and a Google Maps results for fast food restaurants near my house (presumably based on all the many times I've searched for stuff based on my zip code).  I'm wondering why we need Wolfram Alpha.

--Dave

[schild]

I'm wondering why we need Wolfram Alpha.

No one likes being made obsolete.

Doesn't really matter, only neckbeards (and I mean true blue neckbeards) would ever use anything named Wolfram Alpha anyway. I mean folks that put ships in bottles and prefer a chalkboard to a whiteboard.

[Merusk]

Yeah asking Google how to fix a prolapsed anus turned out plenty of results.

What, I needed something more obscure than you people and your silly common knowledge.

On the other hand asking "what is the maximum span of a 2x10 syp#1 joist @ 19.24"O.C." returned less useful information.

[MahrinSkel]

Yeah asking Google how to fix a prolapsed anus turned out plenty of results.

What, I needed something more obscure than you people and your silly common knowledge.

On the other hand asking "what is the maximum span of a 2x10 syp#1 joist @ 19.24"O.C." returned less useful information.

Cutting that query down to a more reasonable "what is the maximum span of a 2x10 joist" returned this calculator as the first result, which seems to have enough options to meet any particular need you might have.

I'm remembering what it was like to search pre-Google, remember how rare it was to find something useful in the first page of results from AltaVista even before the spam links got started?

--Dave

[dusematic]

I'm wondering why we need Wolfram Alpha.

No one likes being made obsolete.

Doesn't really matter, only neckbeards (and I mean true blue neckbeards) would ever use anything named Wolfram Alpha anyway. I mean folks that put ships in bottles and prefer a chalkboard to a whiteboard.

I lol'd.

[K9]

Well google failed pretty badly with some science questions, so I'll wait and see how Wolfram Alpha does with those.

[schild]

Well google failed pretty badly with some science questions, so I'll wait and see how Wolfram Alpha does with those.

"Do unicorns exist? Addendum: If not, why is there a horse with a gold horn in my backyard?" isn't a science question, K9.

[Murgos]

I went to a talk 5 or 6 years ago by this man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotfi_Zadeh

We've been conditioned into thinking like the search engine when we ask a question to get decent results but there is A LOT more search engines could do that they don't.

Try something like, "Name a few large lakes in Switzerland that are near France?"

It's not a hard question, it would take a human about a minute with a map to come up with a pretty good answer with a small set of candidates and is an example of a style of question, that if it could be answered by a computer would be very useful.

Being able to interpret fuzzy concepts that relate two different things is really where searches need to be headed.

More here: http://www-bisc.cs.berkeley.edu/zadeh/papers/From%20Search%20Engines%20to%20Question-Answering%20Systems...2006.pdf

[Mosesandstick]

More here: http://www-bisc.cs.berkeley.edu/zadeh/papers/From%20Search%20Engines%20to%20Question-Answering%20Systems...2006.pdf

48 pages  . Time to buy a kindle.

[Hawkbit]

As a librarian, the possibilities for this technology are simply awesome. 

It puts me one step closer to building that bunker in my backyard though, so when the machines take over I'll join the resistance to fight back. 

[naum]

Wake me when it's live and available for public consumption.

Otherwise, it's just PR puffery.

[Hawkbit]

It went live and it seems to work pretty decently. 

I asked it "What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?" and it answered "42". 

I'm down with that answer. 

[schild]

What is the average air speed speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

OF COURSE YOU DON'T, MR. ALPHA.

What the fuck is this thing?

The thing on the right says, "Enter any food" and then gives an example of "1 apple + 2 oranges"

Ok.

So I enter "1 apple + 2 oranges"

Assuming apple | Use dried apple or prepared apples instead
Assuming any type of apple | Use apple, with skin or apple, without skin instead
Assuming any type of orange | Use orange, plain or
      more
          o orange, navels
          o orange, florida
          o orange, with peel
          o orange, california, valencias
      instead

Uh. Ok. Maybe we should stick to using it as a calculator and use, oh, I don't know, the rest of the internet for nonsense.

i herd u liek mudkips

Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

However! It gave me a unit of measurement for mudkips, which is kips. Obviously.

[Soln]

it's scaring the GOOG which is good enough for me.  Big song and dance this week from them about the 130-some products they've launched and how they are S-M-R-T about serch.

[Lantyssa]

"What is the circumfrance of the Earth?"  --  Dunno what to do; link to earth which has radius but not circumfrance

"What is the mass of uranium?" --  Got it plus conversions

"Is there a chemistry department at UH?"  --  Dunno

"University of Houston Chemistry Department"  --  Dunno; link to UH which gives UH stats, but nothing about my department

"How long would it take to reach proxima centauri?"  --  Dunno; link to Proxima Centauri with lots of info

"What is a black hole?"  --  Gave some neat equations.

[naum]

/yawn

Lethargic response time, most queries unable to "compute", offering up basic information that you could already get from Google (you are aware you can use Google as a calculator + dictionary), and using CIA factbook or inserting "wiki" at the lead of your search query will net you most of the stuff they're providing without the flash progress bar fanfare…

/wake me when it can actually do something remarkable…

[schild]

So, when you put in something it doesn't understand, for example "u" instead of "you," the engine adds it to a list of future topics. Perhaps something it or the people behind it will research.

It gives me an interesting idea. Learning computers aren't going to take over the world if we make them stupid.

Perhaps I really want to know if "it lieks mudkips" now.

[K9]

It doesn't seem to respond well to phrases.

e.g. "What does the NOD2 gene encode?" gets the standard "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input." However, simply entering NOD2 gives you gene information. Same result for FOXP2.

I'm trying some more ambiguous acronyms though, since gene nameses are more likely to be distinct, and the engine seems geared towards sciences.

Entering "BBC" gives: "Assuming "BBC" is an airport" and gives information about Bay City Municipal Airport, TX. The "referring to a general topic" link does point to the Television and Radio channel, but nothing there about the BBC. Wikipedia already resolves conflicting acronyms and entries far better than this.

Entering "MMA" gives: "Assuming "MMA" is a medical test" and then some brief notes about some medical procedure.

Simple phrases for simple questions gets some results:

"What is tea?" -- Dictionary definition of tea "assuming tea is a word"

"Who is schild?" -- Decides that schild actually means schilde and gives you information about a town in Belgium

"Who won the Battle of Gettysburg?" -- "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."

"Battle of Gettysburg?" -- Gives you the distance between Battle (a small town in the UK) and Gettysburg in the US.

"e^(pi*i)" -- Gave correct information about this no problem.

"Nonlinear optimisation" -- "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."

"Nonlinear optimization" -- "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."

"Methicillin" -- "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."

"Swine Flu" -- Gives case and death statistics for the last 5 days, nothing else


I have to agree with naum, nobody is going to find W|A more useful than a combination of google and wikipedia anytime soon. Even when you do get an answer that relates to what you intended to ask, the detail is very thin; and of the detail it does give, most is useless. Searching wikipedia for "Swine Flu" will give you far more information than this; the choice of information which W|A is giving you seems bizarre in comparison.

[K9]

Enter "You're not perfect" and I get the response



Probably coincidental, but paused me for a moment when I read that.

[Quinton]

Alpha is pretty neat when you hit something it knows about, but pretty sad when it misses.

Compare "cats" on Alpha and Google -- neat taxonomy dealie vs wikipedia page and assorted other resources on cats.

Compare "yellow boxfish" on Alpha and Google -- nothing vs some nice pictures, and wikipedia as the second hit.

Compare "DS2431" on Alpha and Google -- nothing vs the manufacturer's page datasheet.

EDIT: Reading more about it, guess it's a "knowledge base" and not a search engine.  Hopefully it'll start turning up in google results and I'll get the best of both worlds...

[Sky]

What is the key of A? Some crap about amperes.

What is a major key? Some crap about ethnicity.

What is the scale length of a Gibson SG? Nothing.

Estimated average cruising airspeed of an unladen African swallow? Answer given.

Geek toy.

[schild]

Estimated average cruising airspeed of an unladen African swallow? Answer given.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16870.msg645171#msg645171

[Sky]

Result:
there is unfortunately insufficient data to estimate the velocity of an African swallow (even if you specified which of the 47 species of swallow found in Africa you meant)

Also:

Input interpretation:
estimated average cruising airspeed of an unladen European swallow
Result:
25 mph (miles per hour)\n(asked of a general swallow (but not answered) in Monty Python\'s Holy Grail)
Unit conversions:
40 km/h (kilometers per hour)
21 knots
11 m/s (meters per second)
660 m/min (meters per minute)
0.66 km/min (kilometers per minute)
950 km/day (kilometers per day)
950 000 m/day (meters per day)
0.41 mi/min (miles per minute)
590 miles per day
36 ft/s (feet per second)
Corresponding quantity:
Slowness from S=1/v:\n | 0.091 s/m (seconds per meter)

[Morfiend]

So far where it seems to shine is for a search that you want it to return information on a top that would give to many results on google.

[Hawkbit]

I don't know much about the architecture of this thing.  Is it learning?  Might we expect it to ramp up in knowledge as it gets used more often?

[rattran]

It's a warehouse full of minimum wage people inputting answers from google into a keyword database. So Schild asks about swallows, no answer. Later that day some nerd types an answer in for Sky to see. No emergent algorithm, google and a finite number of monkeys.this may be speculation

[schild]

It's a warehouse full of minimum wage people inputting answers from google into a keyword database. So Schild asks about swallows, no answer. Later that day some nerd types an answer in for Sky to see. No emergent algorithm, google and a finite number of monkeys.this may be speculation

Nah, seems accurate. Once someone types in enough things, it gets added to future topics. It's not really learning so much as people who are probably interns who get to work "some place smart" doing something they believe to be noble in the pursuit of knowledge or some shit.

[Righ]

Try getting Wolfram Alpha to tell you who won the last F1 motor race.

Assuming "F" is referring to music | Use as a unit instead | Use "F1" as referring to math or a chemical compound

I'm using "F" for something else now. F Wolfram Alpha.

[Grimwell]

It's not porn compliant. I predict failure outside the academic community. 

[Hawkbit]

Give 4chan a chance, it's only been live for a few days. 

[rattran]

Their terms of use are pretty amusing, can't use their answers to anything without attribution, as they claim copyright on all search results.

It is permitted to use and post individual, incidental results or small groups of results from Wolfram|Alpha on non-commercial websites and blogs, provided those results are properly credited to Wolfram|Alpha
...in most cases the assemblages of data you get from Wolfram|Alpha do not come directly from any one external source. In many cases the data you are shown never existed before in exactly that way until you asked for it, so its provenance traces back both to underlying data sources and to the algorithms and knowledge built into the Wolfram|Alpha computational system. As such, the results you get from Wolfram|Alpha are correctly attributed to Wolfram|Alpha itself.
If you make results from Wolfram|Alpha available to anyone else, or incorporate those results into your own documents or presentations, you must include attribution indicating that the results and/or the presentation of the results came from Wolfram|Alpha.
Failure to properly attribute results from Wolfram|Alpha is not only a violation of these terms, but may also constitute academic plagiarism or a violation of copyright law.

So pretty much, fuck 'em.