51 replies to this topic

[Gerald W. Gaston]

Well it's not there yet, and I don't see it completely replacing anything we use now... but it is still useful. Compared to google you can often get more concise info. Take the "19 grams is how many troy ounces?" question. Put that in Wolfram and you get the answer right off. Of course in this case you can just put "19g=?troy oz" into a google search and it will do the conversion. But try "19g=?ozt"... no go in Google, but Wolfram works for all three of these examples. OK conversions are really nothing special... but it is still useful.

Another example... you just want to know the RDA of vitamin D... so put "RDA of vitamin D" into google and Wolfram... which can you find 400 UI quicker with?

[Mind]

Funny...I haven't found a question it can answer yet. It knows nothing about DAF2. I guess its bioinformatics potential needs to be developed a bit more. I also asked "how many carbon atoms are in a mole?" No answer. Now that is really surprising - considering it is supposed to be a science-answer engine.

I have seen other questioner's come up with some interesting answers and I think it will be helpful in some ways, but I think it really needs to be opened up to more experts/users so the database can be more complete.

[Gerald W. Gaston]

which can you find 400 UI quicker with?

Argh... I meant IU not UI...

I also asked "how many carbon atoms are in a mole?" No answer.

In that example, it should give you a 'related input' to try... which has the answer. But yes it still needs some work.

Edited by frankbuzin, 17 May 2009 - 05:40 PM.

[Matt]

This question of mine clears one thing up at least...

"are you an alien?"

response

"no I'm not"

But seriously, does need some work! I have spent a little while trying to get used to it, it can take a bit of time but it might be useful for a few things. I'm sure I'll be using it but no replacement for google or anything.

Edited by Matt, 18 May 2009 - 06:59 PM.

[Shoe]

I'm not exactly very impressed by WA, but not completely unimpressed either. I think it looks like it has a lot of potential. In a couple of years I expect it to be much, much better -- that is, if enough time and money will be spent on it.

BTW, it was actually of real help to me today: it calculated an integral for me that I had trouble with.

[DJS]

BTW, it was actually of real help to me today: it calculated an integral for me that I had trouble with.

Yes, I was a bit too quick to judge (although I still feel this gadget will be of no use to me for a long time). It's good with calculus.

So now math student will also have the answers to the even problems.

[lunarsolarpower]

So now math student will also have the answers to the even problems.

The ones who haven't been packing a TI-89 for the last decade.

[niner]

Wolfram Alpha is Wikipedia, and less! Much less. The hype reminds me of Dean Kamen's Segway...

[DJS]

So now math student will also have the answers to the even problems.

The ones who haven't been packing a TI-89 for the last decade.

Hah, yeah you're right. Graphing calculators... that was one of the stupidest posts I've made in a while. (If you couldn't tell, math is not my passion)

[modelcadet]

Has anybody here read Stephen Wolfram's book, A New Kind of Science? I am very interested in his ideas, and to the extent that I've learned about his approach, I find much similarity to my Friendliness work. I am wondering, however, why he would outright reject mathematics. If I understand his premise, I have the maths for the structure-forming phenomenon he describes. In his thousand pages, is there math, or is it all qualitative description of his theory? He mentions topology in his description of computational equivalence, and it would greatly surprise me if he hadn't found my mathematical expression for this structure formation.

If he hasn't, and if I'm not completely crazy (which I most likely am), I think I can describe in 1 page what took him 1000...

I've been working these past couple nights, so I can only really absorb his ideas through audio... I was working yesterday morning, listening to a lecture he gave on his book, and a professor from UVa's commerce school took interest, generating a really interesting conversation. Thanks Wolfram!

[treonsverdery]

I kind of like wolfram alpha http://www.imminst.o...mp;#entry327516
I was able to do a useful calculation with it that I could not have otherwise done without talking to a human being or spending hours practicing from a book

I can tell there are opportunities on learning new ways to think I had to try a couple things to list elements with density above 1 yet I can get it to make lists of unicode characters Its kind of artistic if you like chemistry: http://www61.wolfram...lements density
Sodium floats thus a chunk of sodium with a blob of something heavy with a detergent coating would make a hyper extreme sodium water demonstration
Magnesium hydride would float if you could make it just like carbon hydrides (polymers)

also using wolframalpha caused this idea http://www.halfbaker...20single_20atom
AFM tip more sensitive than a single atom
as amorphous elemental materials Cr as well as Zn may "have" the same density Thus just one Zn atom at the tip of a Cr AFM tip has higher resolution as e- perturbations are particular to that atoms quantum states

Rhodium as well as Thorium have wide nuclei with prim distances to highest occupied molecular orbital From a nanotechnological point of view with an amorphous mass density is reminiscent of which atoms have an average similar radius Thus if you ignore structure yttrium is about the same radius as titanium That means at an edge a Ti Yt linkage would be stronger Zn as well as Cr have the same density thus if you put Zn or Cr at a crystal of the other metal any effects are purely from absolute electronegativity rather than electronegativity as a function of atomic radius
You can isolate a nucleus effect from a crystal lattice effect thus you could create a new type of hypersensitive AFM tip based on something even more sensitive than the electrical charge on a crystal of pure element

Also there are some crazy density holes where the series skips wide possible densities; that could be used with separations

wolfram alpha may be an online communications evironment or companion that makes people think cleverer thoughts

[Ben]

I thought it was pretty cool.

Edited by Ben - Aus, 07 June 2009 - 02:18 AM.

[lunarsolarpower]

Has anyone figured out how to get it to do more complicated things yet? For example I used it to figure out how many spheres 0.004 microns in diameter it would take to equal the volume of a single sphere 0.7 microns in diameter. However it took me three separate queries to do so.

1: volume of a sphere .7 microns in diameter
2: volume of a sphere .004 microns in diameter
3: 1.437x10^-15 / 2.681x10^-22

Result: 5,359,940

Any time I tried to combine this into a single question it couldn't get it.

[Mind]

Ok, now I am really getting annoyed. One of the things I wanted to try out is the "famed" capability of Alpha to compute nutrition labels for a particular recipe. I make Chocolate treats with cocoa powder, almonds, peanuts, coconut oil, sun crystals (stevia/sugar blend), and whey protein powder. The damn thing won't calculate anything past 2 ingredients.

It still doesn't know "how many carbon atoms are in a mole?"

[Boondock]

I'm pretty impressed after spending a couple of minutes playing around with things. It's not able to do complex questions, clearly, but if you want to quickly know how far one city is from another, or what year that historical figure died, it'll give you an answer quicker than you'll find it yourself. Very interested to see how this develops.

[miklu]

I think the biggest promise for Wolfram Alpha is the composition of queries. Let's look at an example:

Consider finding out the distance between the capital of Finland and the capital of Sweden. In traditional Google search, you would first query the capital of Finland (that is Helsinki) and the capital of Sweden (that is Stockholm), and finally check the distance with Google Maps (it is about 200 miles).

In Wolfram Alpha you could simply query "distance from capital of finland to capital of sweden" and get the answer—all the "sub-queries" would be worked out automatically by Wolfram Alpha.

Or consider the query "earliest record by Beatles". Wolfram Alpha's natural language processor could transform this to the least ambiguous mathematical query first(sort(find-all(record,beatles), date)).

Such natural language processors have been researched for decades, but it is only now—thanks to the Internet—that they can have all the data available to them.

Edited by miklu, 17 July 2009 - 05:11 PM.

[Mind]

Well, I found out something about grammar once again, and it is rather funny. "How many carbon atoms are in a mole?" A human scientist understands this question but it is not the correct way to ask the question. There are varying amounts of carbon atoms in a mole (the animal), lol. The correct question is "How many atoms are in a mole of carbon?" Which by the way, Wolfram does know. My apologies.

[Luna]

it's funny :D
And apparently the number of atoms in males and female both estimated at 7x10^27 :D
I liked the ability for it to show a lot of chemical information,

I typed a name of a blood pressure medicine called Spironolactone and it gave me a lot of information, pictures, even 3D molecule image!
Human hormones like insulin, Prolactin didn't have an image.
Testosterone, Estrogen, Progesterones, did!

The average female and male height seems completely wrong O_o female showed 157 and males 168.
Might be including childs?

There is a graph showing where most seem to be and I think it shows females at about 165 or more and men around 175-177 which is so much more likely!

I could get the answer that females have 2 breasts usually! but noticing it said females I tried specifically males it said females anyways :D
Trying men and women both failed!
I actually tried to get the average bra size but nothing seems to work :D

Then again! the average penis size returns results! :D

the average length of an erect human penis (age > 17) is 15.1 cm! :D
In the bottom it says:
Corresponding quantity:
Light travels time t in vacuum from t = c/x:
504ps (picoseconds)

So I am guessing that means light only takes 504ps to travel through a men's penis.. that's short! :D

My first attempts using wolf-something were actually saying hello and how are you ! which he she it responds :D

Are you alive also yields answers :D

Are you stupid also works :D

Are you a cat? returns no I am not :(

j kinda like wolfie! trying to tell him/her/it that resulted in topic still under development :X guess I have to stick to my boyfriend and wait for AIs to get smarter! :D

[Mind]

I must have the most rotten luck with Alpha. I was reading the Alpha blog about how it has such great tools for analyzing stocks, so I thought I would plug in BTIM (BioTime, Inc.), of course, it has no clue what BTIM is. I tried "BioTime, Inc" as well and no luck.

On a positive note, it can now handle more than 2 ingredients for computing nutrition labels.

[forever freedom]

I still find the results i get from Wolfram Alpha discouragingly poor. They'll have to improve it a LOT if they want to have any chance at competing with Google, or even with Bing and Yahoo! Search.

Edited by forever freedom, 11 October 2009 - 04:45 PM.

[Elus]

Wolfram-alpha is a great tool. I use it to help with my calculus homework all the time, lol.

[melly_d]

I just tried it myself. Very neat. A fun change from Google. I don't like it when companies get as big as Google is in its market and I think Wolfram is a nice change. It doesn't work completely like a search engine though, and is best used for its calculation abilities, or so I have found so far.