Miles
WolframAlpha
Has anybody heard about this new google-like scientific search engine?
http://www00.wolframalpha.com/
"You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer"
Looks good, especially those formulas and scientific pictures
Biarchus
Re: WolframAlpha
I heard about it, apparently it's awesome. Haven't used it myself, as I don't often encounter mathematical formulas in my education.
For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
Campidoctor
Re: WolframAlpha
It is anything but Google-like. It's completely different. It has been hyped as the Google-killer, but it is not, and never was supposed to be.Originally Posted by Ghoul_Sunday
In general, if you look for anything which is connected to or described by numbers, WA presents you astonishing results. If you look for more (pop)-cultural or "soft" issues, it will provide worse results than Google. However, there are still a number of good search engines around, e.g. Clusty or Kartoo (use Google to find them).
"The cheapest form of pride however is national pride. For it reveals in the one thus afflicted the lack of individual qualities of which he could be proud, while he would not otherwise reach for what he shares with so many millions. He who possesses significant personal merits will rather recognise the defects of his own nation, as he has them constantly before his eyes, most clearly. But that poor blighter who has nothing in the world of which he can be proud, latches onto the last means of being proud, the nation to which he belongs to. Thus he recovers and is now in gratitude ready to defend with hands and feet all errors and follies which are its own."-- Arthur Schopenhauer
Re: WolframAlpha
Wolfram Alpha does appear to be extremely good, I spent a day playing about with its capabilities.
I do have the feeling that it's very much `unfinished' as it is though. Fully operational, and very interesting, but I've come across a number of bits and pieces that don't seem to work quite ideally. Syntaxes that you'd expect to work but don't, or occasionally some confusion over terms because it references to so many things.
However, I know that it's not at all intended to be a finished product, and looks like it'll improve significantly, but thought it worth pointing out that its unfinished nature does show though in a noticeable manner.
Also, to eisenkopf, I totally agree that it isn't and wasn't supposed to be, an alternative to google. I wonder why people seem to have that idea though? All of the stories about it in the press seem to relate it to google, and I've no idea why. It's a self contained encylopedia type thing with a very high level of interaction with the data it has. I know that it uses some quite clever code to do searching through the data, so on that level it may be like google, if it actually uses an algorithm which competes for effectiveness with googles algorithms, but that doesn't seem enough of a link for people to keep calling it a google killer.
Miles
Re: WolframAlpha
Yes, that's what i though. I wrote google-like more in a meaning that it is a search engine. wolframalpha is a complementary product to google, not a substitut
Ordinarius
Re: WolframAlpha
It's more than just a math engine, it can calculate the calories in your lunch, tell you how common your name is, calculate your life expectancy, provide economic data. This search engine is awesome beyond belief.
"Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln.
(War is merely the continuation of politics by other means.)
Re: WolframAlpha
I wholeheartedly agree, 'tis super-awesome. Anything that permits a calculation just as this is the best thing ever:
http://www78.wolframalpha.com/input/...f+swiss+cheese
It can calculate the nutritional information of a moon sized lump of cheese (which we all know is what the moon actually is really, rather than boring old rock that the NASA guys want us to believe....)
But yeah, it has an enormous amount of potential. I already use it for all calculations I do involving units of any kind. I've found much to my dismay that seldom in actual physics do you use SI units, each branch uses it's own set of units (usually making the most often used constants for that field = 1). Which is fine and useful so long as you only use those units, but whenever you're required to move between them, all sorts of confusions occur.
But this (and previously, although to a less well implemented extent, google calculator) helps massively.
Triggering
Re: WolframAlpha
Personally it seems more like a toy than a serious search engine. I haven't been impressed.
"When I die, I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like Fidel Castro, not screaming in terror, like his victims."
My shameful truth.
Re: WolframAlpha
Really? I'll admit there certainly is some of that element, a bit gimmicky in places, some stuff that you probably wouldn't need.
But overall I think the system has an awful lot of use. As I said, I already do all of any `off-the-cuff' type calculations using it. Calculations involving units and stuff too.
I used to use Mathematica (their other product, a maths engine) quite frequently too, and they seem to be implementing much of the same functionality into this (indeed, you can even export Mathematica versions of maths bits and pieces).
I'll admit that things like the population type data and similar I can't imagine being used by professionals, but it certainly lets people who are just interested in a topic collate data in a much quicker and more efficient way than would otherwise be possible.
I could even imagine it's use in schools and similar, it would provide a very easy way to show how you can interact with and present data.
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