Wolfram Alpha - A Force To Be Reckoned With | Hacker News Reader

Wolfram Alpha - A Force To Be Reckoned With

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12 pointskkleiner8 comments

I think the warts in the natural language interface and limitations in data-sets made it difficult to see initially, but I really feel like there is something very exciting about Wolfram Alpha.

Wolfram Alpha is doing something that feels almost like thinking. I give it input and it parses it, determines what I want, combines data in a novel way, and feeds me output. When it gets my query right and has data, it feels like I'm seeing a capability that was human-only previously now falling into the realm of AI.

Edit: Also, it is improving. At launch, I couldn't get it to understand 2 slices of bread and 1 slice of cheese (choked on the cheese) and now it does.

Here's a thoughtful alternative take on Wolfram Alpha:

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolfram...

I use Wolfram Alpha for real on an almost daily basis - before I go for a surf, if you can believe that.

I've found that their tide report is far superior to the other offerings that I've found on the web. See here for an example: http://wolframalpha.com/input/?i=san+diego+tides

this is google's first response for that:

http://ocean.peterbrueggeman.com/piertide.html

and it's the exact same graph, except its much faster than WA.

I don't get anything for that result. Or "Los Angeles tides" or "Santa Monica tides."

If I just put in "tides", it'll give me a dropdown where I can select a station -- I'm assuming the station that reports tides -- but after clicking a station near me, I still get nothing.

Wolfram and I have never really gotten along well.

The only thing I really use Wolfram for is an integral calculator, but what an integral calculator it is!

I agree. I've been using it for differential equations- it's easier to jump into than Mathematica (I haven't had time to get into the syntax yet).

The integrator is excellent.

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