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I think Wolfram Alpha / Language is cool, but generally agree with your analysis. Is the Wolfram engine supposed to be a tool to better access indexed human kno

I think Wolfram Alpha / Language is cool, but generally agree with your analysis. Is the Wolfram engine supposed to be a tool to better access indexed human knowledge on the net? Or is it about teaching people to think in a structured way about querying and manipulating this data? For the former goal, we really need to know what's going on behind the scenes of his program to weight the results. For the latter, what are we teaching if the language obfuscates the details of how it is interpreted?

iofj 11y ago
The thing about Mathematica (and any other math product) is that it lets you increase the abstraction level of your thinking. If you have a smaller problem, first type it into mathematica, and see if it comes up with an answer. It means that you don't have to divert your efforts into that small problem. That said, mathematica has a function to have it explain exactly what it did to solve a particular problem. Example: http://i.stack.imgur.com/V9dxn.png http://i.stack.imgur.com/V9dxn.png
- zekevermillion 11y ago
  Sure, Mathematica is great. But showing the formulas does not mean showing how the code was interpreted -- ie, translated into machine instructions. So it's good for exerting power over equations that have known algorithms for solving efficiently. Not to knock his achievements. I mean, what have I done that's so cool?
- lutusp 11y ago
  > The thing about Mathematica (and any other math product) is that it lets you increase the abstraction level of your thinking. The difference between Mathematica and other environments is that in the latter, you ascend from the trivial to the abstract, hopefully learning the entire structure as you go, but with Mathematica, you're deposited on a mountaintop with no obvious pathway down. > That said, mathematica has a function to have it explain exactly what it did to solve a particular problem. Yes, but this doesn't work for the more advanced features. If it did, someone could simply copy down the conversion sequence and recode it for a different environment. As a result, Mathematica users are in the position of accepting results whose genesis is concealed.

iofj 11y ago

The thing about Mathematica (and any other math product) is that it lets you increase the abstraction level of your thinking. If you have a smaller problem, first type it into mathematica, and see if it comes up with an answer. It means that you don't have to divert your efforts into that small problem. That said, mathematica has a function to have it explain exactly what it did to solve a particular problem. Example: http://i.stack.imgur.com/V9dxn.png http://i.stack.imgur.com/V9dxn.png

zekevermillion 11y ago
Sure, Mathematica is great. But showing the formulas does not mean showing how the code was interpreted -- ie, translated into machine instructions. So it's good for exerting power over equations that have known algorithms for solving efficiently. Not to knock his achievements. I mean, what have I done that's so cool?
lutusp 11y ago
> The thing about Mathematica (and any other math product) is that it lets you increase the abstraction level of your thinking. The difference between Mathematica and other environments is that in the latter, you ascend from the trivial to the abstract, hopefully learning the entire structure as you go, but with Mathematica, you're deposited on a mountaintop with no obvious pathway down. > That said, mathematica has a function to have it explain exactly what it did to solve a particular problem. Yes, but this doesn't work for the more advanced features. If it did, someone could simply copy down the conversion sequence and recode it for a different environment. As a result, Mathematica users are in the position of accepting results whose genesis is concealed.