A new engine for knowledge presentation and searching was released and wow. I'm impressed.
Queries like "positition of Jupiter at 23:00 tonight" are quite enlightening.
http://www22.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=jup...t+23:00+tonight
Molecular comparisons
http://www22.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=caffeine+vs+sand
Weather forecasts
http://www22.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=will+it+rain+today%3F
Fun, fun, fun
I love how the information is presented. Check it out if you can!! If you find some interesting results maybe post them here.
Full Version: Wolfram Alpha
The presenter on the BBC's Today programme had no luck with his question. I've tried a few - sensible ones I think - and got no answers yet. Eventually I asked it for the second line of Daisy, Daisy - didn't even know that.
OK I'm impressed. I tried:
What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow
and it did ask for a distinction:
Assuming estimated average cruising airspeed of an unladen African swallow | Use estimated average cruising airspeed of an unladen European swallow instead.
What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow
and it did ask for a distinction:
Assuming estimated average cruising airspeed of an unladen African swallow | Use estimated average cruising airspeed of an unladen European swallow instead.
"How do you get a rover out of a sand trap"
Nothing
Useless.
Nothing
Useless.
It is potentially very neat but I'm also finding it hard to find standard queries styles that consistently generate results. When you hit something it can understand it comes up with some very nice condensed summary information but when you want to find something in particular it can be hard.
I tried to find the typical amount of energy a human consumes\generates per day. (It came up in a class I was teaching today - my guess was that humans generate\consume about 100 watts on average, my student reckoned it was 300watts).
So I started with queries like:
human power, human energy consumption, human calorie intake, human heat, what is the amount of food a human needs
All yielded bubkiss.
"Recommended Daily Allowance" led to an interesting table that allowed me to find great things like the calorie content of 10 Peanut M&M's or two slices of swiss cheese. I thought I was getting close when it then allowed me to find the Adult Female\Adult Male Dietary Reference Intake results for Vitamin A and Zinc but I couldn't switch that query from the Vitamin reference levels to food energy units. Just pumping in "Adult Male Dietary Reference Intake" also yielded nothing.
Anyway I then abandoned that attack and decided to ask it to tell me how many Joules in a Calorie and then tell me how many kilowatts are needed to provide energy at 2000 Calories per day.
Eventually this lead to:
convert 4185*2000 joules per day to kilowatts
Which contains as one of it's comparison results the magic answer I was looking for: ~ 1.0 - 1.1 human daily average power ( 85-100 W )
Interestingly entering " human daily average power" back into WA confuses it and yields:
Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.
By comparison entering "average human power watts" into Google yielded "The average human generates around 100 watts in an average day" in the summary text of the first entry in the results.
I got a far, far better result with a query for "Terminal Velocity" - it gives you a quick set of values you can play with to see how various characteristics affect it, charts, formulae and the rest. It is a bit Earth-centric for my liking as you can't change the setting for gravity in the quick table it creates for you to play with but it is a very good response to a query on a physical concept.
"Polar Orbit" takes a second link to get good results but that produces a nice intro to a well defined concept too.
The problem here is two fold. The easy part is that I'm unfamiliar with what type of queries it wants me to make while I know how to get Google give me stuff I want. The hard part is that the Google's of the world are very, very good at sorting through the fuzziness of human input and WA doesn't have that yet. Hopefully that part will improve over time.
I tried to find the typical amount of energy a human consumes\generates per day. (It came up in a class I was teaching today - my guess was that humans generate\consume about 100 watts on average, my student reckoned it was 300watts).
So I started with queries like:
human power, human energy consumption, human calorie intake, human heat, what is the amount of food a human needs
All yielded bubkiss.
"Recommended Daily Allowance" led to an interesting table that allowed me to find great things like the calorie content of 10 Peanut M&M's or two slices of swiss cheese. I thought I was getting close when it then allowed me to find the Adult Female\Adult Male Dietary Reference Intake results for Vitamin A and Zinc but I couldn't switch that query from the Vitamin reference levels to food energy units. Just pumping in "Adult Male Dietary Reference Intake" also yielded nothing.
Anyway I then abandoned that attack and decided to ask it to tell me how many Joules in a Calorie and then tell me how many kilowatts are needed to provide energy at 2000 Calories per day.
Eventually this lead to:
convert 4185*2000 joules per day to kilowatts
Which contains as one of it's comparison results the magic answer I was looking for: ~ 1.0 - 1.1 human daily average power ( 85-100 W )
Interestingly entering " human daily average power" back into WA confuses it and yields:
Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.
By comparison entering "average human power watts" into Google yielded "The average human generates around 100 watts in an average day" in the summary text of the first entry in the results.
I got a far, far better result with a query for "Terminal Velocity" - it gives you a quick set of values you can play with to see how various characteristics affect it, charts, formulae and the rest. It is a bit Earth-centric for my liking as you can't change the setting for gravity in the quick table it creates for you to play with but it is a very good response to a query on a physical concept.
"Polar Orbit" takes a second link to get good results but that produces a nice intro to a well defined concept too.
The problem here is two fold. The easy part is that I'm unfamiliar with what type of queries it wants me to make while I know how to get Google give me stuff I want. The hard part is that the Google's of the world are very, very good at sorting through the fuzziness of human input and WA doesn't have that yet. Hopefully that part will improve over time.
QUOTE (djellison @ May 18 2009, 12:09 PM) 
"How do you get a rover out of a sand trap"
Nothing
Useless.
Nothing
Useless.
hehee, give it some time!
Sorry, last one.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Angels are pure intelligences, not material, but limited, so that they have location in space, but not extension. Therefore, an infinity of angels can be located on the head of a pin.
(according to Dorothy Sayers (who also maintains that the question is simply a debating exercise))
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Angels are pure intelligences, not material, but limited, so that they have location in space, but not extension. Therefore, an infinity of angels can be located on the head of a pin.
(according to Dorothy Sayers (who also maintains that the question is simply a debating exercise))
I'm sure there's many bugs yet, but this has a LOT of potential. Love the fact that it straightens out the units for you automatically (was abusing the Newtonian gravitational constant in various ridiculous ways for fun...)
I'll start getting interested when I see the start of the Wolfram Alpha Lunar X Prize.
Phil
Phil
Here's an article about Wolfram Alpha that shows both its good and bad sides:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/bizt...1894098345.html
And here's the URL to go to Wolfram Alpha dircctly:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/bizt...1894098345.html
And here's the URL to go to Wolfram Alpha dircctly:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.