Comments on: The people vs Wolfram Alpha

By: Bill Maslen

Bill Maslen — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:00:37 +0000

Hm. I’ve given Wolfram Alpha a pretty good thrashing, using a wide variety of questions, and I’d have to agree that the interpretation algorithms need a lot of refinement. Certain types of question it deals with very well (e.g. “distance between Earth and Mars”), others it answers ‘intelligently’ (e.g. “not enough information is available”), but an awful lot of fairly straightforward questions get the “not sure what you mean” response. I suppose you could say it’s the opposite philosophy to the Google “if you’re not sure what they want, just give them the kitchen sink” approach, so from that point of view, represents an evolutionary step that won’t necessarily succeed on its own, but points the way to a more refined search model that will eventually include parameters that can be tweaked in far more sophisticated ways than the Boolean options available on Google will currently permit. From that perspective, it’s actually rather exciting. From the jaded, overhyped consumer’s perspective, it’s sadly rather disappointing.

By: Steve Cassidy

Steve Cassidy — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:33:13 +0000

Nicely put, everyone. I would say that the right test for Wolfram Alpha isn’t giving it Wikipedia queries about Britney Spears, Poschiavo, or Thrush(es). The test is, take Wolfram’s example queries, and put them into Google. What happens then?

By: Lise

Lise — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:12:33 +0000

You have an excellent point, but then I’d question why the launch has taken place in the way it has – lots of public fanfare on general news channels rather than a quiet release into the scientific community? Headlines in the daily broadsheets like “Can Wolfram Alpha take on Google?” and “‘Google killer’ Wolfram Alpha gets public demo” surely aren’t going to help the public perception of WA as a scientific tool.

I’m looking forward to WA becoming a useful thing, but at present I’ve found some of the same data-shortage problems reported elsewhere. It’s certainly fine if you want to compare stocks and shares – WA knows more about Revlon sales figures than I could ever have imagined – but try to compare other data sets and it does repeatedly run into the problem of not knowing what they are yet. Which makes me wonder why it was launched, so publically and noisily, through the channels that it was.

By: Ant Evans

Ant Evans — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:03:05 +0000

Just ask the pope.

benedictxvi@vatican.va

By: Alex P

Alex P — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:26:51 +0000

Could google list results for Wolfram Alpha? That would make it a one-stop-shop…

By: Bobbie

Bobbie — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:18:25 +0000

“If you can find out the biggest selling single of the nineties with a quick Wikipedia search, why on Earth wouldn’t you?”

Because I would like to use the API. For example that query could be used to make a youtube mashup to play music videos for the biggest selling single of the nineties

By: David

David — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:25:57 +0000

Thank you for posting this intelligent observation. I would also recommend perhaps sharing this insight with some of your colleagues. This other PC Pro article, for example, is an embarrassment: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/05/18/9%c2%bd-things-wolfram-alpha-doesn%e2%80%99t-know/

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:50:00 +0000

I will point out that Wolfram Alpha says that the series n^(-1.5) diverges.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:52:06 +0000

Thank you for this! I couldn’t agree more. Why would anyone want to compete with Google when they already do an acceptable job as it is. This is a new kind of tool- one that I think appeals more to those who are looking for quick quantitative information (like the nutritional value of an egg). For my math/science needs, I’ll be using Wolfram|Alpha. For everything else, I’ll probably stick with Google.

However, I saw on Newsy that although this is no competition for the original Google, there may be some competition between Wolfram and the not-quite-in-beta Google Squared, which makes more of an effort to organize their results. So we’ll see. I still think I’ll be using Wolfram|Alpha.