A New Kind of Search

dculberson

#1 – 12:42 AM May 16, 2009

So, wait... you enter search [x] in Wolfram Alfa, and they're kind enough to enter it into Google instead? Becaush, err, because that's what the results are for the search there... Well, whatev'. Shizzz. That's some cool shit.

dculberson

#2 – 12:43 AM May 16, 2009

Oh, I see. Wow, that's amazing. They aren't sure, but like, in the end, is surety a good thing? Like, probably not, and shit. damn.

zikman

#3 – 1:32 AM May 16, 2009

hey, it's a computational KNOWLEDGE engine.
irrelevant questions are disregarded. please note.

Felix Mitchell

#4 – 1:34 AM May 16, 2009

Yeah I was unimpressed by what it could do as well. It could tell me the latitude of London but none of the other qustions I asked.

zikman

#5 – 1:39 AM May 16, 2009

I imagine, given a little time - or a lot of time - that it'll probably be a pretty powerful tool, or useful tool, or whatever.

it's still way early in the development to judge it, even considering how long it took to get to this point.

bundito

#6 – 3:36 AM May 16, 2009

Aww, c'mon, Rob! Don't you know WA is teh Google-killa? You can't go dissing it. That's not what tech bloggers are supposed to do!

CraziestGadgetsdotcom

#7 – 5:49 AM May 16, 2009

wow this looks Cuil.

per the recommendation on the right side of the wolfman i entered a query about my local area "population of Brooklyn" to which it returned Brooklyn, CT. FAIL.

There are 2,539,206 in Brooklyn (per Google).

Shannon

#8 – 6:46 AM May 16, 2009

I asked it "what is the melting point of a human" and it told me "940 degrees". Educational!

dr. dave

#9 – 7:00 AM May 16, 2009

To be fair, W|A is more than a search engine, and isn't for everybody. Ask Google to integrate sin(x) from pi to 2pi and see if you get anything useful.

dculberson

#10 – 7:07 AM May 16, 2009

My laptop apparently needs a breathalyzer.

Anonymous Anonymous

#11 – 11:21 AM May 16, 2009

I recommend reading some of the examples before you start. The thing works differently from Google, as this photo clearly demonstrates. After reading some of the howtos and manual sections, I find it really cool. But it's not a typical search engine.
Even if it were just a web application where you could run mathematica commands; that alone sounds pretty amazing to me, but I think this is a lot more. This led me to read up on the world of Wolfram and it seems like Mathematica on the web is really happening!

O_M

#12 – 2:18 PM May 16, 2009

...I actually tried asking it "How do you manufacture and assemble an atomic bomb?". It sat there for about five minutes before it gave the response of not knowing how to handle the question.

Go figger.

David B.

#13 – 6:17 PM May 16, 2009

I find this new format impossible to scan... I can't even, really, tell the difference between the posts and the adds and the post images

It's really awful.

waltisfrozen

#14 – 11:20 PM May 16, 2009

After being impressed with the demo, I decided to try this out with the query "United States median tax rate compared to other democratic nations". Hmmm....that didn't work. Let's try "United States median tax rate". Still nothing? Okay, how about just "tax rate" then. Finally, a result, but it simply returns my local sales tax along with same fancy math so I can express my local sales tax as "33/400" if I was so inclined. I think we're a loooong way from this living up to its promise. Call me when this goes into Wolfram Beta.

David Carroll

#15 – 5:06 AM May 17, 2009

WolfRam kind of reminds me of Yahoo and Netscape search engines from 10 years ago.

That is NOT a compliment.....

The only difference is back then all search engines gave you pages and pages of completely irrelevant hits, which is the same as: Wolfram isn't sure...

That being said Google sucked when it started too...

technopagan

#16 – 7:50 AM May 17, 2009

I asked it " What is the answer to life the universe and everything" and it returned an answer of "42".
Seems like Wolfram Alpha is working just fine to me.

Secret_Life_of_Plants

#17 – 3:36 PM May 17, 2009

I was super super disappointed in W/A. Didn't seem to know much of anything. When I typed in Hallali - a hunting term it gave me data on the last names Hall and Ali. I did like the branching evolutionary charts that you get when you type in an animals name but that is just graphics. Oh well, maybe it will get better...

It kind of reminded me of "No Child Left Behind" in that it just produced facts without context or critical analysis. Facts don't exist outside of contexts. The search results, at best, were like a 4th grade geography report on Nebraska.

Margaret Sanger on a bloody coat hanger

#18 – 6:00 PM May 17, 2009

I was totally disappointed that an unfinished, one-of-a-kind computational search engine that's not designed to compete with general information search engines couldn't handle general information searches. D-, won't buy again, and I hope it fails like a 4th grade geography report on Nebraska submitted as the answers to an exam on differential calculus, a bloo, a bloo bloo bloo

Agies

#19 – 7:42 PM May 17, 2009

@12
Seems you didn't ask the right question to get that answer. 42 is the answer to "the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything," not "the answer to life, the universe, and everything." It's an important distinction.

Clearly WolframAlpha needs some work.

jibbles

#20 – 8:47 PM May 17, 2009

@12
Google knows the answer to that question too.

While trying to figure out how it works, I discovered an amusing pair of searches. Try the following queries:

"Who is the king of pop?"
vs.
"Who is the king of rock?"

Instead of Google-bombing, the W-alpha game can be to get a result containing none of your search terms.

jibbles

#21 – 8:50 PM May 17, 2009

@15. Take that back... oops, in contains both... dunce cap for me... wish there was a way to edit-own-comments...

bmjames

#22 – 1:07 AM May 18, 2009

See, if you RTFM you'd see it's not intended to work like a natural language search.

This works: http://www90.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=highest+point+in+pennsylvania

bmjames

#23 – 4:16 AM May 18, 2009

Also you're completely missing the point by comparing it to Google Search. It's more like Google Calculator on steroids.

You're also missing the point by using it to look up basic facts and measurements. Yes, it has these, but of course they're elsewhere on the web in places like Wikipedia. What Wikipedia can't do for you, though, is perform complex deductions on-the-fly from these facts.

Your fail irks me, Beschizza.

tp1024

#24 – 5:37 AM May 18, 2009

If you think you don't like it - get the hell off the servers!

I want to use them.

aluxeterna

#25 – 9:01 AM May 18, 2009

It did ok with my first question:

http://www84.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=airspeed+velocity+of+unladen+swallow

Dietmar Stefitz

#26 – 1:03 PM May 18, 2009

Maybe it is still in the learning fase, shouln'd we give them some days. Maybe 100 days?

jitrobug

#27 – 2:27 PM May 18, 2009

It doesn't do all that well with bioinformatics, because it seems to assume human is the only species for which biological data is detailed..

trying to get information about, say, a mouse gene will get you info about that gene in humans, or about mice...in general.

on the other hand, the gene page that it makes is a nice gene page.

Anonymous Anonymous

#28 – 2:38 AM May 20, 2009

Just about crapped my pants seeing the results of this search:
"How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?"

Introspective

#29 – 5:38 AM June 13, 2009

Wolfram Alpha is a good news in the area of search engines. It has some advantages compared to the other search engines. Still, it is not the competition to Google or other search engines, since it uses totally different approach. It is more like dictionary or encyclopedia than search engine. http://my-introspective.com

Nannes2

#30 – 12:01 AM August 25, 2009

What Wikipedia can't do for you, though, is perform complex deductions on-the-fly from these facts.
Accounting diploma | Teaching degree

Nannes2

#31 – 12:02 AM August 25, 2009

It kind of reminded me of "No Child Left Behind" in that it just produced facts without context or critical analysis. Facts don't exist outside of contexts. The search results, at best, were like a 4th grade geography report on Nebraska.
Social work degree | Nutrition degree

Nannes2

#32 – 12:03 AM August 25, 2009

Ask Google to integrate sin(x) from pi to 2pi and see if you get anything useful.
Nursing Diploma

venn99

#33 – 9:58 PM November 15, 2009

this is exactly what i was looking for and will help me in the future thanks cash gifting