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WolframAlpha

Ollie

Ollie

CF Legend
Just found this amazing site. Type in any question and it answers it (most of them).
It knows the meaning of life, everything about my birthday, what percentage black I am, any maths problem soultion and lots of other questions.
The site was only launched a couple of days ago but it hopes to rival Google as it gives direct answers to questions other than links to sites that may not contain the answer you want.

Here's a BBC news page about it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8052798.stm


And here's the link to the site. :)
www.wolframalpha.com


What do you think of it? What questions have you tried?
 
Ian

Ian

From CoasterForce
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
I asked if it thought if Ollie is a goon. It said it didn't understand.

Rubbish.
 
Ollie

Ollie

CF Legend
^I meant if you type in the day you were born it tells you everything from, the time the sun rose and set, any events that happened. It tells me how old I am in years, weeks days, what phase the moon was in. So lots of information that you don't need to know really. :p
It's more for finding answers for questions (like maths science etc) rather than stuff like 'Is Ian Bell bald?'.

And if you search stuff like 'Who is Erol?' it tells you all this:
http://www95.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=who+is+Erol
Like how many other people on earth have the same name and what ages they are so you can see how popular it is.
Also if you type in website names like Youtube or Google it comes up with how many hits it gets daily, how much they make and lots of facts and figures.

It's more for finding things out rather than asking silly questions that you know it's not going to know.
 
LiveForTheLaunch

LiveForTheLaunch

CF Legend
Wolfram doesn't understand any kind of input that I've been asking. It's a cool concept, but I'm not gonna try all day to find a question it will answer for me.
 
Hixee

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
It's quite a neat idea, but it's got a long way to go before it can match Google.

It's simply a matter of time.
 
C

c&r

Mega Poster
It's a totally different concept really, I don't see google doing definite integrations of ln x for me haha.
 
C

c&r

Mega Poster
They're totally different though, wolfram alpha is pretty much maths/science/statistics/data based, google's just a tool for combing the web.
 
Screaming Coasters

Screaming Coasters

Strata Poster
But they are comparing it to Google, I highly doubt this site is the way forward for anything. It has no use in the marketing world as of yet, which is a big no-go for thousands.

Biggest pile of **** since hotornot.
 
C

c&r

Mega Poster
Well I don't know why they would, I personally wouldn't. And I dunno, it does provide instant comparison of billions of statistics which I'm pretty sure took hours up until this point, it can also map every mathematical function on earth and I think solve most solvable mathematical problems, has data on every element, every piece of physics, engineering, etc, etc.

I don't really think the entire world revolves around marketing Erol =p.
 
C

c&r

Mega Poster
Haha true, I think it's mainly aimed at the scientific/economic community though rather than as a commercial kinda thing. Wolfram's a bit of a nutter so it's all good =p
 
furie

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Actually, it is a really useful tool, you just have to think a little outside box for it. It's not a tool for gathering puerile information - it's actually a tool.

The idea is that the site itself knows answers. So if you want to know "How much farther is Jupiter from Earth than the Moon", it will work it out for you. Instead of having to surf through thirty or forty astronomy sites in search of the distances involved then calculating it out yourself.

It's not going to answer the question of who died in last night's Eastenders, Google will always be top for that. I think it's wrong it's being compared to Google, but it's the only thing people have that they can compare it to really.

In reality, it's a bit like saying a scientific calculator is like Google.

As the system builds, the information you'll be able to extract will become more refined, deeper and varied. It's not a trivial thing (despite me taking the piss above) - it's a very valid tool.
 
Screaming Coasters

Screaming Coasters

Strata Poster
So how does it learn more information?
Is it a smarter child type thing where it gathers frequently asked questions or are there actual people driving this? May seem like a dumb question but there are systems out there that can do this now.
 
furie

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
It's a bunch of very clever people pumping very clever things into and exceptionally clever bit of software or two. :)
 
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