What, Duck tape?
Or maybe it's based on the creator's name being Wolfram and it currently being the alpha version.
Merged Wolfram Alpha
- Thread starter jimtron
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What, Duck tape?
Or maybe it's based on the creator's name being Wolfram and it currently being the alpha version.
mummymonkey
Did you spill my pint?
Well it failed at the first hurdle on what I'd have thought was a simple question.
"Who won the FA Cup in 1928?"
Google gave the correct answer as the first result:
"The 1927 FA Cup Final was won by Cardiff City, who beat Arsenal 1–0"
Wolfram didn't even try:
"Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."
"Who won the FA Cup in 1928?"
Google gave the correct answer as the first result:
"The 1927 FA Cup Final was won by Cardiff City, who beat Arsenal 1–0"
Wolfram didn't even try:
"Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."
Floyt
Chordate
Yup, that is actually quite important to realize
All it does is combine information it already has in its database. The applications should be quite different from that of a classic search engine.
I found it rather brilliant when it comes to astronomy, stats and maths.
elgarak
Illuminator
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But it already sucks when you go into physics.Yup, that is actually quite important to realize
All it does is combine information it already has in its database. The applications should be quite different from that of a classic search engine.
I found it rather brilliant when it comes to astronomy, stats and maths.
From a marketing perspective, this is a devastating error, which is unfortunately all too common for new web services: The service is announced, but is not yet fully developed. People try it and find it does not do what they want. A few months later, the service is matured and would do what people want, but then no one wants to use it anymore, because everyone has tried and remembers only their bad experience from the start-up time.
nathan
Zygoticly Phased
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Epic fail.
'main sequence stars' -> input interpretation '100 brightest main sequence stars' -> computation timed out.
very well, let's try '10 brightest main sequence stars' -> 'wolfram alpha isn't sure what to do with your input'.
If I can't even feed it back its own interpretations, how can I learn how to use it?
geni
Anti-homeopathy illuminati member
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It has real problems with absolute magnitude. Regardless of what I hit it with it always seems to pull a list of stars by apparent magnitude then list them by absolute magnitude.
Wikipedia does slightly better but you would be lucky to type in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_luminous_stars it is however one click away from [[Brightest stars]].
Angus McPresley
Muse
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Stephen Wolfram is my pet peeve. Yes, an entire person is my pet peeve. It probably has something to do with the big fat book of his on my bookshelf that I bought because not enough scientists were brave enough in their reviews to call it crap. Because he's Stephen Freaking Wolfram! And maybe I also dislike him because his ego is big enough to cause gravitational lensing.
So I'm both predicting and kind of rooting for Alpha to fail. I've played with it, and there's some fun stuff you can pull up, but I can't imagine dressed-up search results will have that much staying power.
So I'm both predicting and kind of rooting for Alpha to fail. I've played with it, and there's some fun stuff you can pull up, but I can't imagine dressed-up search results will have that much staying power.
Not a fan then.
I'm quite sure most of the problems with Wolfram Alpha will be fixed and this device could be totally misused to gather enormous amounts of information on people.
Dr. Wolfram even said this was a potential problem, but he rationalized it as being acceptable because he wouldn't do that.
Dr. Wolfram even said this was a potential problem, but he rationalized it as being acceptable because he wouldn't do that.
I confess I have been unable to get a straight answer from it with regard to anything.
It appears the AI crowd have finally mastered politics.
INRM- I'm not sure if you got the joke earlier. I was quoting Darth Vader's response to a sceptic of "The Force". You seemed to similarly lack faith in AI. (As I do myself.)
It appears the AI crowd have finally mastered politics.
INRM- I'm not sure if you got the joke earlier. I was quoting Darth Vader's response to a sceptic of "The Force". You seemed to similarly lack faith in AI. (As I do myself.)
rjh01
Gentleman of leisure
New search engine wolfram
This is a new search engine (not sure if that is the right phrase) with a difference. You give it a question and it tries to give you the answer.
Like give 2+2, it will give you 4. Very basic. But put any maths question like that and it will give you the answer.
Give it the name of a city it will give you basic information about that city.
What it to scare you? Put in Where am I? It will then tell you which is your ISP and the physical location.
Put in James Randi and it will tell you he is born 7/8/1928 (sic) and a magician.
Put in a name of a public company and it will give you stock prices. It will even compare stock prices.
This is something new so it is very basic and primitive. But the potential!
Link http://www.wolframalpha.com/
This is a new search engine (not sure if that is the right phrase) with a difference. You give it a question and it tries to give you the answer.
Like give 2+2, it will give you 4. Very basic. But put any maths question like that and it will give you the answer.
Give it the name of a city it will give you basic information about that city.
What it to scare you? Put in Where am I? It will then tell you which is your ISP and the physical location.
Put in James Randi and it will tell you he is born 7/8/1928 (sic) and a magician.
Put in a name of a public company and it will give you stock prices. It will even compare stock prices.
This is something new so it is very basic and primitive. But the potential!
Link http://www.wolframalpha.com/
I think it might be there way of preventing scripting languages (python, ruby, etc) from scraping search results.
nathan
Zygoticly Phased
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Hm, if they really wanted to stop scraping, why not, um, disconnect from the internet?
Well, I thought I'd give it a try for myself and see what happens.
Well, it did give me 4, so not a bad start.
Swansea. Well, it got the location right, but appears to have lost almost 1/4 of the population and thinks the closest cities are Birmingham and London.
No host found.
Well, it says he's a magician and gives date and place of birth. However, it completely fails to tell you what his real name is, even though a search for "Randall James Hamilton Zwinge" gives exactly the same search result and is therefore clearly known.
I'm rather less than impressed.
To be honest, I just don't see what the point is. Even assuming that all the information had been correct and rather more complete, what's the big deal? I can find out exactly the same stuff just as easily from Google or Wikipedia. And yes, Wikipedia is actually quite a common port of call for professional physicists. OK, having another venue available to find things out that is done in a slightly different way wouldn't be a bad thing, but the hype over this being some amazing new idea that's going to change everything is just bollocks. It does exactly what other things already do, except it doesn't do them as well.
Well, it did give me 4, so not a bad start.
Swansea. Well, it got the location right, but appears to have lost almost 1/4 of the population and thinks the closest cities are Birmingham and London.
No host found.
Well, it says he's a magician and gives date and place of birth. However, it completely fails to tell you what his real name is, even though a search for "Randall James Hamilton Zwinge" gives exactly the same search result and is therefore clearly known.
I'm rather less than impressed.
To be honest, I just don't see what the point is. Even assuming that all the information had been correct and rather more complete, what's the big deal? I can find out exactly the same stuff just as easily from Google or Wikipedia. And yes, Wikipedia is actually quite a common port of call for professional physicists. OK, having another venue available to find things out that is done in a slightly different way wouldn't be a bad thing, but the hype over this being some amazing new idea that's going to change everything is just bollocks. It does exactly what other things already do, except it doesn't do them as well.