6 ms·

I love Wolfram Alpha. Every time I think about it, I think it's a grand achievement and an absolutely amazing tool. I just wish I had any idea what to do with

by edanm 15y ago

I love Wolfram Alpha. Every time I think about it, I think it's a grand achievement and an absolutely amazing tool. I just wish I had any idea what to do with it. Once in a long while, I'll think of trying a query on it. Mostly for city populations, past Academy Award winners, etc. But I have nothing to do with it on a day-to-day basis. What do Hacker News users use it for?

gjulianm 15y ago
Mathematics. Plot a difficult function, search limits, derivatives, integrals... Wolfram is the master of calculus. It only fails when I make queries about sets.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- dfan 15y ago
  Here too. I started relearning a lot of my old calculus techniques recently and Wolfram Alpha was superb for checking my solutions and plotting functions.
- gxs 15y ago
  Mathematics indeed. It can handle complex integrals quite well too.
mahyarm 15y ago
Wolfram alpha should be positioned as a web search supplement. Just like how if you put some math equation into google search, it will calculate it for you, wolfram alpha has to do the opposite and add a web search for you. It will then become significantly more useful, since every query will have a web search fallback. If they load it in parts, like duck duck go does, even better. I think duck duck go with more extensive wolfram alpha integration would work.
- tylerritchie 15y ago
  I really enjoy using duckduckgo, but both it and wolframalpha suffer from slow response time. I'm confident that I could query google, duckduckgo and wolframalpha for any query that all three could answer ("diameter of a quarter" ) and have the answer in google and then have followed the link to the wikipedia article on the US quarter before the answer appeared in either wolframalpha or duckduckgo. In fact, I just checked, that's the case (for me at least). With wolframalpha I would have had time to enter the query into duckduckgo and then return to wolframalpha before the link I had to click to tell wolframalpha I meant "quarter" as a currency came up. Duckduckgo didn't answer the question for me, but it was a click away (so better than wolframalpha in that regard). I enjoy using wolframalpha for the things that I know have easy answers (populations, distances and measurements of celestial bodies, time measurements--30 days ago) and give concrete numbers, but would require slightly more effort to pull out of wikipedia. I should test exact page load times for those queries from several geographically distinct locations on multiple browsers, but it's late and I'm now going to bed.
markerdmann 15y ago
I use the traffic query a lot (e.g. 'traffic google.com'). You can also pit sites against each other: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=dropbox.com+vs+airbnb.com http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=dropbox.com+vs+airbnb.c...
- iconfinder 15y ago
  Great, that's useful. The only problem is "Based on Alexa estimates". It could be even better if they included more data sources e.g. Google Trends and Compete.
iconfinder 15y ago
I use it for converting time across time zones. It's awesome for that: e.g. "12am PST in CET"
Jach 15y ago
I mostly use it for one-off math queries that my TI-89 can't handle. (Or when my TI-89 is put away somewhere.) Most recently I've been using it for Laplace and Inverse Laplace transforms, they also recently added the ability to "show steps" when solving differential equations too which is neat. It's tremendously helpful for getting work done with the results instead of spending time trying to calculate them by hand. I'm still wondering what sorts of ramifications their "show steps" feature has for any math education where it's applicable, hopefully it's putting less focus on homework and more on testing.
slavak 15y ago
It's an awesome tool for academy. I've found myself using it all the time for my undergrad homework: Everything from finding the inverse of a given matrix to plotting out the results for output to the assignment. Admittedly I haven't found myself using it much for anything else.
- giu 15y ago
  I'm always amazed when I see the "Show Steps" button. You can learn a ton of things by just looking through the steps WA took to arrive at the result of a complicated derivative or integral. I personally use it for tasks involving Linear Algebra, too, e.g. calculating eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors. I also installed the Wolfram Alpha Chrome extension, which I use quite often and always comes in quite handy: http://www.wolframalpha.com/downloads.html http://www.wolframalpha.com/downloads.html
- msutherl 15y ago
  I used Mathematica for this. For every math class I had a designated Mathematica notebook that ended up being a summary of the course by the end.
szany 15y ago
I used it to help my mom convert her American recipes to metric units, including trickier queries like "how much is 1/2 cup of butter in grams?" for which you need to know the density of butter. And problem sets of course, because typing in physical constants and converting units is annoying. Oh, and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3521445 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3521445 ("orbital velocity of ISS in mach"). Anytime I need a result that requires knowledge of some quantity, I usually try Wolfram|Alpha first.
matthiasl 15y ago
What do Hacker News users use it for? I use it to solve mathematics problems when my rusty skills fail me. Best example: I needed to see what a pulse, f(t), specified as ten coordinates looked like after passing it through a transfer function: as^2 + bs + c H(s) = --------------------- ds^3 + es^2 + gs + m a,b,c,d,e,g,m are constants. I haven't dealt with that sort of problem since university, about two decades ago. Reading a couple of wikipedia articles about transfer functions and laplace transforms reminded me of what needed doing, but I kept getting stuck in a thicket of terms. I then tried feeding the problem to Wolfram Alpha. That worked for a simplified version of the problem, but I couldn't give it the full problem because Wolfram Alpha limits the query length. I ended up installing a trial copy of Mathematica. That did exactly what I wanted. It was enormously satisfying, but Mathematica has a high price tag and I only need to do this sort of thing once every few years. Next time, I'll take a look at the price and be tempted. But maybe Wolfram Alpha pro is enough of a step closer to Mathematica to deal with my next problem. That would be great. (There are other ways to solve the above problem, e.g. with a Z transform. But doing it analytically was far more satisfying and gave me confidence in the result.)
jonknee 15y ago
My girlfriend is an attorney and uses it for date calculations. If you need the delta between two dates, it's not a bad way to go.
DavidChouinard 15y ago
I use it for financial data on compagnies. For example, you can find out that Apple makes 521,000$ profit per employee per quarter: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+profit%2Femployee%2C+microsoft+profit%2Femployee%2C+google+profit%2Femployee http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+profit%2Femployee...
mrleinad 15y ago
I'd love to build a widget that would inform me of how many years/weeks/days old I am. As a matter of fact.. to the nerdcave!
Kuiper 15y ago
I found Wolfram Alpha to be immensely useful when doing chemistry work back in undergrad. Just input a chemical compound and see what it spits out. Now imagine being able to call any of those pieces of data during calculations using a string, e.g. "molecular mass of Na2SO4". Very convenient, simplifies many calculations. Another thing that may seem obvious, but you can input multiple strings and get a nice visual comparison. For example, try "cleveland, detroit, flint".
- estevez 15y ago
  I remember coming across a group of other students who were getting into a argument about a tricky calculation required for a chemical analysis pre-lab. After this had gone back and forth for maybe 5 minutes, I pulled out my laptop and settled it in about 15 seconds, which was pretty fun.
jws 15y ago
Helping your high school student with homework. They might be honing their skills factoring 5th order polynomials with complex roots, you can keep right up with Wolfram Alpha.
jgrimes 15y ago
I use it for calculating the nutritional value of meals. See this for an example: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+lb+chicken+breast%2C+4+oz+broccolli%2C+2+pints+of+milk http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+lb+chicken+breast%2C+...
js2 15y ago
The dumbest of things - quickly calculating the number of days between two dates.
- emplynx 15y ago
  This is a huge. It's so easy to make mistakes doing those computations by hand, but Wolfram Alpha handles it with ease. I use it all the time.
jwr 15y ago
Well, an example from yesterday -- while troubleshooting an electronic circuit, I wanted to know (roughly) how long I can survive without external power, given that there is a 10uF capacitor powered at 3V. Nothing revolutionary, but it's nice that you can just enter "10uF * 3V" into Wolfram Alpha and get the answer both in coulombs and A*s (which is what I really needed), all the while confirming what you think the relations are. So I'd say I use it as a smart calculator that also assures me my thinking is correct.
- Florin_Andrei 15y ago
  That's exactly what I use it for most of the time. Byzantine calculations using random units and it usually gets it right. Awesome.
- dmd 15y ago
  But Google can do that too. Just search for "10 microfarads * 3 V in amp seconds"
  - jwr 15y ago
    My calculator can do that, too. But the question was what people use Alpha for, so I answered with a (simple) example.
larrywright 15y ago
It's great for calculations, conversions, and random information. Examples: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F2+an+avacado http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F2+an+avacado http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.8TB+in+kilobytes http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.8TB+in+kilobytes There are some other cool ones you can use, such as "planes overhead", "satellites overhead" All that said: I generally think that if I was smarter I'd be able to use it for more stuff :)
pearle 15y ago
I use it all the time for mixed unit equations and conversions.
knewter 15y ago
I just used it to calculate how many days 1 million seconds was, but I didn't need it for that obv. I just love that I can give it plain text. We needed the answer to tell us how long a relay was good for worst-case :)

by edanm 15y ago

gjulianm 15y ago

Mathematics. Plot a difficult function, search limits, derivatives, integrals... Wolfram is the master of calculus. It only fails when I make queries about sets.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dfan 15y ago
Here too. I started relearning a lot of my old calculus techniques recently and Wolfram Alpha was superb for checking my solutions and plotting functions.
gxs 15y ago
Mathematics indeed. It can handle complex integrals quite well too.

mahyarm 15y ago

Wolfram alpha should be positioned as a web search supplement. Just like how if you put some math equation into google search, it will calculate it for you, wolfram alpha has to do the opposite and add a web search for you. It will then become significantly more useful, since every query will have a web search fallback. If they load it in parts, like duck duck go does, even better. I think duck duck go with more extensive wolfram alpha integration would work.

tylerritchie 15y ago
I really enjoy using duckduckgo, but both it and wolframalpha suffer from slow response time. I'm confident that I could query google, duckduckgo and wolframalpha for any query that all three could answer ("diameter of a quarter" ) and have the answer in google and then have followed the link to the wikipedia article on the US quarter before the answer appeared in either wolframalpha or duckduckgo. In fact, I just checked, that's the case (for me at least). With wolframalpha I would have had time to enter the query into duckduckgo and then return to wolframalpha before the link I had to click to tell wolframalpha I meant "quarter" as a currency came up. Duckduckgo didn't answer the question for me, but it was a click away (so better than wolframalpha in that regard). I enjoy using wolframalpha for the things that I know have easy answers (populations, distances and measurements of celestial bodies, time measurements--30 days ago) and give concrete numbers, but would require slightly more effort to pull out of wikipedia. I should test exact page load times for those queries from several geographically distinct locations on multiple browsers, but it's late and I'm now going to bed.

markerdmann 15y ago

I use the traffic query a lot (e.g. 'traffic google.com'). You can also pit sites against each other: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=dropbox.com+vs+airbnb.com http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=dropbox.com+vs+airbnb.c...

iconfinder 15y ago
Great, that's useful. The only problem is "Based on Alexa estimates". It could be even better if they included more data sources e.g. Google Trends and Compete.

iconfinder 15y ago

I use it for converting time across time zones. It's awesome for that: e.g. "12am PST in CET"

Jach 15y ago

I mostly use it for one-off math queries that my TI-89 can't handle. (Or when my TI-89 is put away somewhere.) Most recently I've been using it for Laplace and Inverse Laplace transforms, they also recently added the ability to "show steps" when solving differential equations too which is neat. It's tremendously helpful for getting work done with the results instead of spending time trying to calculate them by hand. I'm still wondering what sorts of ramifications their "show steps" feature has for any math education where it's applicable, hopefully it's putting less focus on homework and more on testing.

slavak 15y ago

It's an awesome tool for academy. I've found myself using it all the time for my undergrad homework: Everything from finding the inverse of a given matrix to plotting out the results for output to the assignment. Admittedly I haven't found myself using it much for anything else.

giu 15y ago
I'm always amazed when I see the "Show Steps" button. You can learn a ton of things by just looking through the steps WA took to arrive at the result of a complicated derivative or integral. I personally use it for tasks involving Linear Algebra, too, e.g. calculating eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors. I also installed the Wolfram Alpha Chrome extension, which I use quite often and always comes in quite handy: http://www.wolframalpha.com/downloads.html http://www.wolframalpha.com/downloads.html
msutherl 15y ago
I used Mathematica for this. For every math class I had a designated Mathematica notebook that ended up being a summary of the course by the end.

szany 15y ago

I used it to help my mom convert her American recipes to metric units, including trickier queries like "how much is 1/2 cup of butter in grams?" for which you need to know the density of butter. And problem sets of course, because typing in physical constants and converting units is annoying. Oh, and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3521445 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3521445 ("orbital velocity of ISS in mach"). Anytime I need a result that requires knowledge of some quantity, I usually try Wolfram|Alpha first.

matthiasl 15y ago

What do Hacker News users use it for? I use it to solve mathematics problems when my rusty skills fail me. Best example: I needed to see what a pulse, f(t), specified as ten coordinates looked like after passing it through a transfer function: as^2 + bs + c H(s) = --------------------- ds^3 + es^2 + gs + m a,b,c,d,e,g,m are constants. I haven't dealt with that sort of problem since university, about two decades ago. Reading a couple of wikipedia articles about transfer functions and laplace transforms reminded me of what needed doing, but I kept getting stuck in a thicket of terms. I then tried feeding the problem to Wolfram Alpha. That worked for a simplified version of the problem, but I couldn't give it the full problem because Wolfram Alpha limits the query length. I ended up installing a trial copy of Mathematica. That did exactly what I wanted. It was enormously satisfying, but Mathematica has a high price tag and I only need to do this sort of thing once every few years. Next time, I'll take a look at the price and be tempted. But maybe Wolfram Alpha pro is enough of a step closer to Mathematica to deal with my next problem. That would be great. (There are other ways to solve the above problem, e.g. with a Z transform. But doing it analytically was far more satisfying and gave me confidence in the result.)

jonknee 15y ago

My girlfriend is an attorney and uses it for date calculations. If you need the delta between two dates, it's not a bad way to go.

DavidChouinard 15y ago

I use it for financial data on compagnies. For example, you can find out that Apple makes 521,000$ profit per employee per quarter: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+profit%2Femployee%2C+microsoft+profit%2Femployee%2C+google+profit%2Femployee http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+profit%2Femployee...

mrleinad 15y ago

I'd love to build a widget that would inform me of how many years/weeks/days old I am. As a matter of fact.. to the nerdcave!

Kuiper 15y ago

I found Wolfram Alpha to be immensely useful when doing chemistry work back in undergrad. Just input a chemical compound and see what it spits out. Now imagine being able to call any of those pieces of data during calculations using a string, e.g. "molecular mass of Na2SO4". Very convenient, simplifies many calculations. Another thing that may seem obvious, but you can input multiple strings and get a nice visual comparison. For example, try "cleveland, detroit, flint".

estevez 15y ago
I remember coming across a group of other students who were getting into a argument about a tricky calculation required for a chemical analysis pre-lab. After this had gone back and forth for maybe 5 minutes, I pulled out my laptop and settled it in about 15 seconds, which was pretty fun.

jws 15y ago

Helping your high school student with homework. They might be honing their skills factoring 5th order polynomials with complex roots, you can keep right up with Wolfram Alpha.

jgrimes 15y ago

I use it for calculating the nutritional value of meals. See this for an example: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+lb+chicken+breast%2C+4+oz+broccolli%2C+2+pints+of+milk http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+lb+chicken+breast%2C+...

js2 15y ago

The dumbest of things - quickly calculating the number of days between two dates.

emplynx 15y ago
This is a huge. It's so easy to make mistakes doing those computations by hand, but Wolfram Alpha handles it with ease. I use it all the time.

jwr 15y ago

Well, an example from yesterday -- while troubleshooting an electronic circuit, I wanted to know (roughly) how long I can survive without external power, given that there is a 10uF capacitor powered at 3V. Nothing revolutionary, but it's nice that you can just enter "10uF * 3V" into Wolfram Alpha and get the answer both in coulombs and A*s (which is what I really needed), all the while confirming what you think the relations are. So I'd say I use it as a smart calculator that also assures me my thinking is correct.

Florin_Andrei 15y ago
That's exactly what I use it for most of the time. Byzantine calculations using random units and it usually gets it right. Awesome.
dmd 15y ago
But Google can do that too. Just search for "10 microfarads * 3 V in amp seconds"
- jwr 15y ago
  My calculator can do that, too. But the question was what people use Alpha for, so I answered with a (simple) example.

larrywright 15y ago

It's great for calculations, conversions, and random information. Examples: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F2+an+avacado http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2F2+an+avacado http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.8TB+in+kilobytes http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.8TB+in+kilobytes There are some other cool ones you can use, such as "planes overhead", "satellites overhead" All that said: I generally think that if I was smarter I'd be able to use it for more stuff :)

pearle 15y ago

I use it all the time for mixed unit equations and conversions.

knewter 15y ago

I just used it to calculate how many days 1 million seconds was, but I didn't need it for that obv. I just love that I can give it plain text. We needed the answer to tell us how long a relay was good for worst-case :)