4 ms·
Many news sites (e.g., TechCrunch) have been hyping WolframAlpha as a threat to Google, and it's natural that people are trying Google-style search queries. How
by michael_nielsen 17y ago
Many news sites (e.g., TechCrunch) have been hyping WolframAlpha as a threat to Google, and it's natural that people are trying Google-style search queries. However, looking at the examples at the site (http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples ), it's clearly not intended as a direct competitor to Google, and it's not at all surprising that it doesn't perform so well on the Google-style queries people are trying. My first take is that it's more like learning Mathematica: you need to learn how to ask it the right sorts of questions, and the examples look like a useful way of learning to do that.
No doubt many of the news outlets who've been hyping WolframAlpha as a competitor to Google will now denounce it as having failed, when it wasn't meant as a competitor at all. It's the news sites which have failed.
- amichail 17y agoAs mathematical queries give by far the most impressive results, this is essentially just a very elaborate advertisement for Mathematica -- just as NKS was.
- quizbiz 17y agoNKS? Just curious.
- jibiki 17y agoA New Kind of Science
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- harpastum 17y agoA New Kind of Science--it's a new scientific philosophy championed by Wolfram, and also the title of his book on the subject. A couple informational URLs: http://www.wolframscience.com/ http://www.wolframscience.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_kind_of_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_kind_of_science
- rw 17y agoAaronson rips NKS a new one in this review: http://scottaaronson.com/papers/nks.pdf http://scottaaronson.com/papers/nks.pdf
- varenc 17y agoMathematical queries aren't the most impressive results because those have already been around in things like mathematic/maple/matlab for years. Symbolic integration is cool, but typing in ISS, and getting the current position of the international space station is cooler.
- ujal 17y agoThis was also my first impression here. Try to compare things, it works beautifully! -> http://tinyurl.com/qevs58 http://tinyurl.com/qevs58 yes, it works also with "mars earth" but commands are way cooler :)
- tokenadult 17y agoI just followed your link for the Mars to Earth comparison, and noticed a cool detail: it reported the current sky position for Mars for MY location, which I assume means that I.P. detection is being used to geographically customize answers. That is useful.
- endtime 17y ago>which I assume means that I.P. detection is being used to geographically customize answers. Yeah, the screencast a couple days ago mentioned this. They use it for more mundane stuff, too - like guessing which Springfield you mean.
- garply 17y agoI'm not so sure the blame falls entirely on the news sites. As I've watched a seemingly unnatural amount of attention fall upon an unreleased product over the past few weeks I've come to the conclusion that we're being led around by Wolfram's PR firm. If that's the case and they were using 'google-killer' to pick up buzz, I think Wolfram deserves to fall on its face. (That's not to say it's not an interesting product).
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- est 17y agoI herd it was a Google-killer, but it turns out to be a Google Calculator Killer
- rms 17y agoIt really does kill Google calculator! It does symbolic stuff, like Mathematica. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=y%3D+y^2+*+x^2+sin%28x%29 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=y%3D+y^2+*+x^2+sin%28x%...
- WilliamLP 17y agoWow, college math homework beware.
- garply 17y agoThat's true, it's one hell of a calculator.
- cellis 17y agoi can never get my php shell to work right so having simple math commands like floor() handy will be awesome. I think i'll tokenize them in Launchy.
- chris24 17y agoW|A is good at dealing with huge numbers, unlike Google Calculator: http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=9999999999999999-10000000000000000&btnG=Search http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=9999999999999999-100... http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=9999999999999999-10000000000000000 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=9999999999999999-100000...
- axod 17y agoFrom my newspaper today. Direct quote from Wolfram - "It will change how people search online". I don't think it's the news outlets fault if the founder is making outlandish claims.
- paulgb 17y agoBecause newspapers never misquote people or take things out of context. :) Did it quote Stephen Wolfram as having said that, or just Wolfram? In fact, another source quotes Conrad Wolfram, who is apparently Stephen's brother, as having said that: http://current.com/items/90053264_googles-search-engine-rival.htm http://current.com/items/90053264_googles-search-engine-riva...
- vladocar 17y agoWolframAlpha is Not threat to Google it just have different target of people. It's more like online scientific encyclopedia + can preform complex math calculation.