Sharpe's Opinion
Friday, 15th May, 2009
A Quick Introduction to Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram Alpha is a ‘knowledge engine’, which calculates answers to factual questions on the fly. It looks truly amazing in this demo, I can’t wait till it goes live later this month.
I’ve said before that we live in the future. Here’s proof. Watch the whole thing, because its worth it.
Comments
I’ve spent a minute trying to connect and…very pretty red and grey graphics, but I’ll try again later. Obviously, your link has created havoc (or it could be something to do with BT not bothering with broadband speed up North).
Permission to rant about BT?
I wouldn’t go that far, Anton – now that it’s launched I’ve had a play and for the moment it’s definitely still a bit short of omniscient. It’s decidedly light on political information, too – they say that’s coming.
HOWEVER, it’s still awesome! Go over there and try plugging in something like ‘Abortions UK / UK Population’ and it will estimate how many abortions per person the UK has. Highly impressive.
It seems you just need to know the right question to ask it.
This is stunning, Stu. Calculators can already compute numbers better than humans but this moves things on from search engines. Wolfram Alpha will say ‘Arr, but we know better than you, Measured!”
One caveat is that it will only be as good as its sources so some work is still left for humans. It is galling to realise it will think of things that have never occurred to me. Before it gets too cocky, Wolfram Alpha could show the actual formula/equation it is using, such as Boyle’s law. I liked the narrator’s voice. School homework will is just going to get too easy!
Wow! I can’t believe how much I’ve needed something like that.
No more scouring the web for relevant data anymore. Whoohoo!
Anton Howes
May 15, 2009 at 9:47 pm