I use it to read scientific articles on subjects I don't know much about. For example, an article talks about a percentage of the population, but I don't know how big that population is. I can simply go into Wolfram and get the missing data. I can also use it to make comparisons with other countries or time periods and, with a few basic queries, quickly explore ideas.

I'm not a scientist, just a programmer with too much time and curiosity on her hands. For me, it gives me a better understanding of topics I was not trained in.

I also use it almost daily to find out the nutritional value of foods. "Foods ranked by vitamin A", "Proteins in 100g of broccoli", etc.

1. Calculations wrt inflation: “$1000 1975 in 2021”

2. Draw a mathematical equation: “(x^2 + y^2 -1)^3 -x^2y^3 <0”

3. Computations with visualisation: “area under y=x^2 from 1 to 3”

4. Bitrate calculations: “1.5TB at 10mbps”

5. Compare weather/climate between cities: “compare weather brussels and cape town”

I use ddg as search engine, so can just add !wa to the query and ddg will redirect it to Wolfram Alpha. I don’t use it very often but love how quickly it can answer most problems.

Spoilers: Turns out `c * (ax + b)^-(ax + b) + d` has some really nice numerical shortcuts/ratios for z-score calculations

I haven't needed to do anything like that since. But it is yet another example of how I think Google maps and similar are weak junk only good for finding coffee shops.

Typing

!wa 2pm Berlin time in New Delhi

Is super useful and answered by Wolfram.

"computation time exceeded"

"does not understand your input"

`units` works too, but doesn't do the same job of solving equations.