Strangely enough, WolframAlpha seems to understand your first query but gives the wrong answer nonetheless. "is 10 percent of the population of united states >

Strangely enough, WolframAlpha seems to understand your first query but gives the wrong answer nonetheless. "is 10 percent of the population of united states > 25 million?" => WolframAlpha says "false". But the population it uses is 309 million, so 10% of it is 30.9 million, which is actually greater than 25 million. Apparently it's a syntax problem: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+population+of+united+states+%3E+25+million%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+population+of+united... False. But surely 309 million is greater than 25 million, right? Wait, 25 million, but it doesn't have any unit. So let's add "people". http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+population+of+united+states+%3E+25+million+people%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+population+of+united... True. Ah-ah! So let's get back to those 10 percent... http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+10+percent+of+the+population+of+united+states+%3E+25+million+people%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+10+percent+of+the+po... i.e. your example plus "people". Still says false. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+10+percent+population+of+united+states+%3E+25+million+people%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+10+percent+populatio... Finally, it works. But it highlights the fact that your syntax has to be very specific to be understood by Wolfram. Which makes the whole thing very error-prone and not discoverable. (Which is a shame because I love CLIs too!)