Wolfram Alpha: First Impressions
May 18, 2009
Today marks the official launch of Wolfram Alpha, which is a mathematically based “computational knowledge engine” that derives some of its datasets from the web. Most news outlets will refer to it as a search engine, but the distinction is important:
Traditional search engines, like Google and Yahoo, seek to index pages on other websites and direct their searchers to these pages. Wolfram Alpha’s goal is quite different – it seeks to extract data from other sources to create a massive internal database, which it will then use to answer its searchers’ questions directly. Where Google and Yahoo serve as middlemen directing searchers to relevant properties, Wolfram Alpha contains all of its answers to its own website.
This brings about Wolfram Alpha’s key difference: it will compute answers that do not appear on the source websites. For instance, you can ask Wolfram Alpha for a ratio of the populations of the United States and China, and it will graph the answer over time. The resulting graph is not scraped from another website, but rather generated by Wolfram Alpha. To be sure this is the case, try comparing two totally unrelated statistics, like the calories in a Snickers bar compared to the height of the Empire State building:
Totally amazing, but to be sure this is not a “Google Killer,” and was never intended to be. Wolfram Alpha is fantastic at providing answers to a specific set of queries, but will not even attempt to answer queries it does not understand or have data for. Whereas Google will bring back something for nearly any query, and chances are high the answer is contained within the set of results. For instance, consider the query “average home price in Raleigh, NC” on the two engines:
Wolfram Alpha:
Google:
Although neither engine knew the answer directly, Google’s first result does: $177,902.
That said, Wolfram Alpha is still incredibly powerful and entertaining. If you’re interested in science and math, you’ll spend hours playing with it (its already taken up most of my day!).
Bonus: Fun Queries to try on Wolfram Alpha
How much paint would you need to cover the moon (in gallons)? Answer
How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Answer
GATTACA: Answer (Alpha is a ton of fun if you’re into genetics – try typing in other common DNA sequences)
How much is one astronomical unit expressed in Robert Wadlows? Answer (Robert Wadlow is the tallest man on earth, according to the Guinness Book of World Records)
Where am I? Answer
If you find other interesting queries or Easter Eggs let us know in the comments and we will add them to this list!
Many of these were found on the new AlphaInputs subreddit. Drop by it if you’re looking for more fun queries for Wolfram Alpha.
