7 ms·

"Use NLP to convert questions into code, which can not only retrieve data, but also do parametrized computation on it." This sounds to me to be the core here,

"Use NLP to convert questions into code, which can not only retrieve data, but also do parametrized computation on it." This sounds to me to be the core here, simplified as far as possible. Quite an undertaking, but if it gets rolling properly, it can actually end up challenging Google. Imagine being able to ask the following question and get an answer with summary and graph and maybe options to drill down, all computed in response to the question, not pregenerated: "How many people were living in China from 1950 to 1980?" (Or don't imagine and just click: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+many+people+were+living+in+China+from+1950+to+1980%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+many+people+were+li... )

3pt14159 13y ago
Eh... I upvoted you for weeding through the bullshit, but it is still bullshit. People shouldn't aggrandize like this. They should let the work speak for itself.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  You don't get it. For any casual browsing a graph means nothing. But for people putting a powerpoint together or doing hw or doing research this graph is useful. Imagine you get a comparison chart from your query (Google already does this for very very very limited comparison queries). If you get the raw data out of Wolframalpha that's even better. Instead of having a data scientist to write code to get the graph or imputing this into excel or words to get a graph, let WA do it for you. Hey here is another idea for innovators: instead of screenshot a graph but don't we have a graph importer in powerpoint? We are just looking at 2D plot, there is nothing fancy about this graph but there are more fancy stuff you can build. A graph is a generic term in mathematics and I hope you know that. Why do we go through social graph and knowledge graph? Why not keep them behind a firewall? Why bother building a JS interpreter in Go? If you can build a machine that can compute anything (universal turning machine, well, I know there are NP problems but we can do our best to compute a subset of the computable - approximation), you can do a lot of crazy things. I think WA is nailing down how the future of computing in relation to life is going to be. Ask a question and gives you back the data to you in both representational and raw form. Here are examples: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+Mozilla%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+Mozilla%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+https%3A%2F%2Fne... If somehow we can contribute to WA's modules (we write our custom programs and WA can adopt them by means of marketplace - select to use this module, for example), then we can utilize WA powerful machinery to do our query and benefit the mass. This is where Open Source can make a big difference! Sure APIs are nice but you know, not everyone has time to manage another new website. If we can get paid to write modules and get commission share based on the number of users ... So on top of API, direct module marketplace IMHO is the game changing. This is why I like Google App Script and App Engine. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+Facebook%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+Facebook%3F
  - 3pt14159 13y ago
    No you don't get it. It isn't sentient code. This isn't smart code. It's just plain old code that does plain old pattern matching like we've been doing for decades. It isn't anything that hasn't been done before. It is just more of the same from WA - Hype and bullshit. How exactly the work that WA is doing going to nail down the future of computing? This is crazy. I'm sick of the hype around WA. It's essentially just a search engine + mathematica at this point.
    - yeukhon 13y ago
      > It's essentially just a search engine + mathematica at this point. Yeah and that integration is more than just 1+1. You'd actually think Google's search engine is entirely sentient code. I'd say half of the stuff we build is nothing more than some regex in the bottom and some string matching. You actually think WA is really just a system that understands some NLP and then sends the NLP strings to some Mathematica APIs? > It isn't anything that hasn't been done before. It is just more of the same from WA - Hype and bullshit. And half of the shit we see on HN has been done before. Quit your job because there is no innovation there. 90% of the security tool people build are nothing more than some stupid string comparison with some strings in the database. Very few is doing real sentient code. I see nothing innovating about the way we browse website, the way we interact with technology or the way we build software today. We are still using browser. We are not automating the way we would like to be. Where are all the talking Siri integrated into our home? WA is very different from Google search. And if WA is good at dealing mathematical models, just wait and see what one could do with those APIs. You can't do this with Google easily.
      - 3pt14159 13y ago
        From "define: sentient" on google.com. sentient ˈsɛnʃ(ə)nt/Submit adjective 1. able to perceive or feel things. From the query "dear google are you sentient? Big Brother Google becomes sentient at last | RiskHeads www.riskheads.org/big-brother-google-becomes-sentient-at-last/‎ by Adam Bishop - in 40 Google+ circles Oct 25, 2011 - If you try the search above you'll notice you can view the sources from which Google gleamed the data and also let them know if they got it right.
recuter 13y ago
I don't see how this ends up challenging Google. It might win the nerds away but I think you'll find the top 85% of queries by volume are already handled well enough - and more importantly, the top 95% of queries by monetization/profit are already handed correctly. Your example search is neat but the CPC on it will not be great. Wolfram could totally turn into a Thing, and a profitable one, just not on the same order of magnitude.
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  If you want CPC: "What is the highest-rated coffee machine with at least 100 reviewers below 150$?"
  - recuter 13y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=shop&q=coffeemachine&oq=coffeemachine#hl=en&q=coffee+machine&tbm=shop&tbs=vw:l,cat:1388,price:1,ppr_min:90,ppr_max:150,p_ord:rv https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=shop&q=coffeemachine...
MaysonL 13y ago
Interesting that that graph shows none of the effects of either the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. In other words, it's quite inaccurate. Also note that neither of the two resultant graphs show the period requested (1950-1980). One shows 1970-2013, the other 1600-2013.
snowwrestler 13y ago
It's interesting computation, but how often is it useful to quickly estimate how many people were living in China between 1950 and 1980? Not to pick on that one example, but I do think this is part of the reason that Wolfram Alpha has not taken off at consumer scale. It seems to me that the things it can do that Google cannot, while technologically impressive, are not particularly valuable to most people. After completing their schooling, most people don't need to solve equations every day. If they do, they already have ways of doing it (Mathematica, for example). And most people don't need to look up census data, or historical GDP tables, or the location of the ISS. And if they do, they already have ways to do that. Basically, Wolfram's approach seems like a great way to organize and make useful knowledge that is fully known. But the most value is pushing the edge of the unknown, and that means continuously taking in, indexing, and presenting new information. Facebook does this, Twitter does this, Stack Overflow does this, etc....and Google indexes all of that.
- ams6110 13y ago
  It might be a good way to solve those stupid interview questions like "how many manhole covers are in Manhattan"
- kens 13y ago
  Slight tangent: If you haven't seen the ISS go overhead, you really should do so - it's pretty cool. To find on when to see it: http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings
- MaulingMonkey 13y ago
  > And if they do, they already have ways to do that. Disseparate ways that take awhile, with results from multiple sources that need to be manually combined to figure out what information is worthwhile. Some of the random queries I've tossed into WA: "If the average mailbox size is 57MB, and I've only processed 65% of one in the past half hour, how long is it going to take to proce ss all 80GB?" Q: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=30+min+%2F+%2857MB+*+0.65%29+%3D+x+month%2F+80GB http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=30+min+%2F+%2857MB+*+0.... A: ~1.5 months, better come up with an alternative "How big is a gigasecond?" Q: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+gigasecond http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+gigasecond A: ~1/3rd of a century "Just how fast are my 5m/s Kerbal Space Program landings?" Q: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5m%2Fs+to+mph http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5m%2Fs+to+mph A: "I've been rear ended at that speed" "How much precision will a double give me at the radius of pluto?" Q: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=orbit+radius+of+pluto+%2F+%282+**+53%29 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=orbit+radius+of+pluto+%... A: "millimeter, perfect" Or work related; "I'm having trouble visualizing these 3d points, please plot them so I can get a better mental picture for why this right angle assertion is triggering" "Divide by b squared? That can't be right..." when canceling out terms in math code for efficiency, rearriving at one of the equations of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_projection#Vector_projection_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_projection#Vector_projec... . "I can't intuit the behavior of this math without graphing it out, lets see... bounds... period... yeah that makes sense!" I also use it for simpler calculations: "How do the prices of gold and platinum stack up against each other?" "How long until sunset? Thanksgiving?" "When is 18 KST in my timezone?" "How much is that in dollars?" "How big is an acre?" "What does the compound interest on that look like?" Some of these could be found through google... probably followed by trolling the results for a specific calculator. Others I could calculate myself. But most would be inconvenient enough without WA I wouldn't ask them. Some of these are idle curiosity, but others have saved me significant time doing my job. It's not a daily sort of thing, but it's a consistent way to answer these oddball questions for myself. Google was a tool I had to learn to turn to with my problems. It didn't used to be my primary interface to all documentation, for example... slowly but surely I turned to it more and more frequently. And so it is so far with me and Wolfram Alpha.
indrax 13y ago
Maybe I'm spoiled by XKCD what-if, but that result doesn't tell me which of those people in 1980 are the same as in 1950, or new people. Or figure out how many people died young in between. If someone goes there for six months, is that living?
salient 13y ago
I think you're making the same "Facebook will kill Google because it's social" argument all over again, just from the mathematical, rather than social, perspective. What I'm trying to say is Google incorporates many types of signals into its algorithm, it's not just one thing such as "social", which is why Facebook could never in fact "beat Google" at their own game (search engines), no matter how hyped up that was a few years ago. I think the same is true about Wolfram Alpha.
justincormack 13y ago
Its not very useful, eg it lists 40 sources for the data without really saying how they are used. Its kind of ok for an approximate answer.

3pt14159 13y ago

Eh... I upvoted you for weeding through the bullshit, but it is still bullshit. People shouldn't aggrandize like this. They should let the work speak for itself.

yeukhon 13y ago
You don't get it. For any casual browsing a graph means nothing. But for people putting a powerpoint together or doing hw or doing research this graph is useful. Imagine you get a comparison chart from your query (Google already does this for very very very limited comparison queries). If you get the raw data out of Wolframalpha that's even better. Instead of having a data scientist to write code to get the graph or imputing this into excel or words to get a graph, let WA do it for you. Hey here is another idea for innovators: instead of screenshot a graph but don't we have a graph importer in powerpoint? We are just looking at 2D plot, there is nothing fancy about this graph but there are more fancy stuff you can build. A graph is a generic term in mathematics and I hope you know that. Why do we go through social graph and knowledge graph? Why not keep them behind a firewall? Why bother building a JS interpreter in Go? If you can build a machine that can compute anything (universal turning machine, well, I know there are NP problems but we can do our best to compute a subset of the computable - approximation), you can do a lot of crazy things. I think WA is nailing down how the future of computing in relation to life is going to be. Ask a question and gives you back the data to you in both representational and raw form. Here are examples: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+Mozilla%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+Mozilla%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+https%3A%2F%2Fne... If somehow we can contribute to WA's modules (we write our custom programs and WA can adopt them by means of marketplace - select to use this module, for example), then we can utilize WA powerful machinery to do our query and benefit the mass. This is where Open Source can make a big difference! Sure APIs are nice but you know, not everyone has time to manage another new website. If we can get paid to write modules and get commission share based on the number of users ... So on top of API, direct module marketplace IMHO is the game changing. This is why I like Google App Script and App Engine. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+Facebook%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Who+is+Facebook%3F
- 3pt14159 13y ago
  No you don't get it. It isn't sentient code. This isn't smart code. It's just plain old code that does plain old pattern matching like we've been doing for decades. It isn't anything that hasn't been done before. It is just more of the same from WA - Hype and bullshit. How exactly the work that WA is doing going to nail down the future of computing? This is crazy. I'm sick of the hype around WA. It's essentially just a search engine + mathematica at this point.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    > It's essentially just a search engine + mathematica at this point. Yeah and that integration is more than just 1+1. You'd actually think Google's search engine is entirely sentient code. I'd say half of the stuff we build is nothing more than some regex in the bottom and some string matching. You actually think WA is really just a system that understands some NLP and then sends the NLP strings to some Mathematica APIs? > It isn't anything that hasn't been done before. It is just more of the same from WA - Hype and bullshit. And half of the shit we see on HN has been done before. Quit your job because there is no innovation there. 90% of the security tool people build are nothing more than some stupid string comparison with some strings in the database. Very few is doing real sentient code. I see nothing innovating about the way we browse website, the way we interact with technology or the way we build software today. We are still using browser. We are not automating the way we would like to be. Where are all the talking Siri integrated into our home? WA is very different from Google search. And if WA is good at dealing mathematical models, just wait and see what one could do with those APIs. You can't do this with Google easily.
    - 3pt14159 13y ago
      From "define: sentient" on google.com. sentient ˈsɛnʃ(ə)nt/Submit adjective 1. able to perceive or feel things. From the query "dear google are you sentient? Big Brother Google becomes sentient at last | RiskHeads www.riskheads.org/big-brother-google-becomes-sentient-at-last/‎ by Adam Bishop - in 40 Google+ circles Oct 25, 2011 - If you try the search above you'll notice you can view the sources from which Google gleamed the data and also let them know if they got it right.

recuter 13y ago

I don't see how this ends up challenging Google. It might win the nerds away but I think you'll find the top 85% of queries by volume are already handled well enough - and more importantly, the top 95% of queries by monetization/profit are already handed correctly. Your example search is neat but the CPC on it will not be great. Wolfram could totally turn into a Thing, and a profitable one, just not on the same order of magnitude.

Mithaldu 13y ago
If you want CPC: "What is the highest-rated coffee machine with at least 100 reviewers below 150$?"
- recuter 13y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=shop&q=coffeemachine&oq=coffeemachine#hl=en&q=coffee+machine&tbm=shop&tbs=vw:l,cat:1388,price:1,ppr_min:90,ppr_max:150,p_ord:rv https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbm=shop&q=coffeemachine...

MaysonL 13y ago

Interesting that that graph shows none of the effects of either the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. In other words, it's quite inaccurate. Also note that neither of the two resultant graphs show the period requested (1950-1980). One shows 1970-2013, the other 1600-2013.

snowwrestler 13y ago

It's interesting computation, but how often is it useful to quickly estimate how many people were living in China between 1950 and 1980? Not to pick on that one example, but I do think this is part of the reason that Wolfram Alpha has not taken off at consumer scale. It seems to me that the things it can do that Google cannot, while technologically impressive, are not particularly valuable to most people. After completing their schooling, most people don't need to solve equations every day. If they do, they already have ways of doing it (Mathematica, for example). And most people don't need to look up census data, or historical GDP tables, or the location of the ISS. And if they do, they already have ways to do that. Basically, Wolfram's approach seems like a great way to organize and make useful knowledge that is fully known. But the most value is pushing the edge of the unknown, and that means continuously taking in, indexing, and presenting new information. Facebook does this, Twitter does this, Stack Overflow does this, etc....and Google indexes all of that.

ams6110 13y ago
It might be a good way to solve those stupid interview questions like "how many manhole covers are in Manhattan"
kens 13y ago
Slight tangent: If you haven't seen the ISS go overhead, you really should do so - it's pretty cool. To find on when to see it: http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings
MaulingMonkey 13y ago
> And if they do, they already have ways to do that. Disseparate ways that take awhile, with results from multiple sources that need to be manually combined to figure out what information is worthwhile. Some of the random queries I've tossed into WA: "If the average mailbox size is 57MB, and I've only processed 65% of one in the past half hour, how long is it going to take to proce ss all 80GB?" Q: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=30+min+%2F+%2857MB+*+0.65%29+%3D+x+month%2F+80GB http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=30+min+%2F+%2857MB+*+0.... A: ~1.5 months, better come up with an alternative "How big is a gigasecond?" Q: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+gigasecond http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+gigasecond A: ~1/3rd of a century "Just how fast are my 5m/s Kerbal Space Program landings?" Q: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5m%2Fs+to+mph http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5m%2Fs+to+mph A: "I've been rear ended at that speed" "How much precision will a double give me at the radius of pluto?" Q: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=orbit+radius+of+pluto+%2F+%282+**+53%29 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=orbit+radius+of+pluto+%... A: "millimeter, perfect" Or work related; "I'm having trouble visualizing these 3d points, please plot them so I can get a better mental picture for why this right angle assertion is triggering" "Divide by b squared? That can't be right..." when canceling out terms in math code for efficiency, rearriving at one of the equations of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_projection#Vector_projection_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_projection#Vector_projec... . "I can't intuit the behavior of this math without graphing it out, lets see... bounds... period... yeah that makes sense!" I also use it for simpler calculations: "How do the prices of gold and platinum stack up against each other?" "How long until sunset? Thanksgiving?" "When is 18 KST in my timezone?" "How much is that in dollars?" "How big is an acre?" "What does the compound interest on that look like?" Some of these could be found through google... probably followed by trolling the results for a specific calculator. Others I could calculate myself. But most would be inconvenient enough without WA I wouldn't ask them. Some of these are idle curiosity, but others have saved me significant time doing my job. It's not a daily sort of thing, but it's a consistent way to answer these oddball questions for myself. Google was a tool I had to learn to turn to with my problems. It didn't used to be my primary interface to all documentation, for example... slowly but surely I turned to it more and more frequently. And so it is so far with me and Wolfram Alpha.

indrax 13y ago

Maybe I'm spoiled by XKCD what-if, but that result doesn't tell me which of those people in 1980 are the same as in 1950, or new people. Or figure out how many people died young in between. If someone goes there for six months, is that living?

salient 13y ago

I think you're making the same "Facebook will kill Google because it's social" argument all over again, just from the mathematical, rather than social, perspective. What I'm trying to say is Google incorporates many types of signals into its algorithm, it's not just one thing such as "social", which is why Facebook could never in fact "beat Google" at their own game (search engines), no matter how hyped up that was a few years ago. I think the same is true about Wolfram Alpha.

justincormack 13y ago

Its not very useful, eg it lists 40 sources for the data without really saying how they are used. Its kind of ok for an approximate answer.