大象传媒

After a few initial test runs of Wolfram|Alpha, I've begun to see how it can be used more in theoretical scenarios, whereas I'd use Google in real-life scenarios. Being an A-Level student myself, in Politics, German, Religious Studies and Politics, I have a use for both Google and Wolfram|Alpha.

Initially, I found the idea by W|A hard to work out - some of the input I was giving it simply produced a message saying that it didn't know what to do with my data, even when I had inputted something fairly simple, such as, for example, "2 to the power of five".

Another quibble I'd have with the W|A service was that - on launch and all through the weeekend - it was horrendously slow. So much so, that after a minute or two of waiting, I'd rephrase my input and take my business over to Google, where I could be guaranteed a response within less than a second.

Thankfully, the W|A team seem to have realised that traffic was causing a big problem, and either a new server has been introduced, or they've installed some traffic load balancing gear. Either way, it's a big improvement this morning over Saturday night.

In all, whilst I see W|A is extremely powerful, I can't help but think: does it really have a purpose outside the university physics lab?

I asked Wolframalpha the question
'How many poeple live in Wales?'

Answer? 5956

Not quite right...

Not so much a Google, more an encyclop忙dia (and not a Wikipedia either)?

@blognickwc Yeah, it's better with US data, to be honest. Shame really, as the web's a global community. Maybe they should introduce a spider to crawl the web for such data? Would certainly increase it's usefulness beyond the laboratory.

I asked how long the longest film ever made was and got nothing after trying several different approaches to this question.

I then tried longest book ever written, with the same results.

In my opinion if you have to first work out how to phrase your question to get the right result, you could have found the answer with Google and/or Wikipedia.

This site is going to have limited appeal to Scientists, Academics, Journalists (and other resaerchers seeking facts), but will not appeal on the broader market.

I initially had concerns over the sources used to retrieve my answer, but on reviewing the sources used for retrieving data on my home town I was satisfied that this data could be relied on. And I was actually pleased to see that this data is referenced according to the Harvard referencing methodology (I believe) so this could be copied directly into any acadmenic journals and papers you are putting together.

So, maybe not for me (unless I go back to university to do a PHD), but I can see the appeal for certain individuals.

I entered "Sedgefield Racecourse" and it told me the distance from Sedgefield (Co. Durham) to Race Course (Clarendon, Jamaica) - a place I didn't know existed!
I think you've been caught up in the hype on this. Please hold back and only bring it to our attention when it warrants it.

This isn't a rival for Google because it isn't a search engine. It's a 'computational knowledge engine'. It doesn't search the web for answers, it uses it's own certified data.

However it may eventually take a proportion of Google's traffic as people use it when a maths or statistics based factual answer is required. It's success depends on how quickly they can ramp up the amount of data in there.

I'm slightly concerned (probably more so by the standard of A-level maths students than anything else) if it's answering problems such as "integrate xsinx" and "solve x^2 + 5x + 6". Unless of course it answers by pointing out the errors in the questions.

/mathspedant

I like the idea of this, it's could be something very very special indeed.

However it's hard to break out of the "google" way of doing things, it's not very good at interpreting queries formed in something resembling natural language.

well I just tried typing in hayfever and it said it did not understand and was I loking for 'Gay Feather'???

I tried this and confirmed it is yet more over-hyped rubbish...

Why doesn't the 'tech' world have a degree of healthy scepticism rather than a foolish [and somewhat childish] "Colours ! Bells ! Whistles ! " approach to anything with sound, light and motion..

WA was unable to understand the name of my nearest town "Kings Lynn" no matter what syntax I used.

If it falls down on trivial test queries, I'm not likely to bother going back with anything tricky.

I asked some basic questions, and it understood the majority. 'When was Charles Dickens born?' yielded an answer, 'where is the Taj Mahal?' gave a map, a word-based answer, but also lots of interesting local data, such as population, time, local weather, and distance to Delhi. 'How far is Sirius from Earth?' succeeded fine, with the answer presented in a variety of units or measurement, and 'how big is Japan?' gave a similar result, including interesting comparisons with other countries. You could get this from other sources, but for simple facts, it might be quicker to ask WA than trawl through a text-based encyclopedia article.

I read the subtitle of this blog on the 大象传媒 News homepage "Will Wolfram Alpha work as a rival search to Google?" and buried my face in my hands.

Within a few minutes of using Wolfram Alpha the advantages of the 'computational knowledge engine' became very clear.

To compare WA to Google is extremely misguided and simplified. If anything, comparing it to Wikipedia or the new Google Squared would be much more worthwhile.

I've had a bit of a play with Wolfram Alpha and it seems to deal well with basic requests for information, however, can't really handle anything you couldn't find out from skimming the Wikipedia article on the subject.

As a medical student I feel it would be of little use to me, I tried a few relatively basic fact-based queries and it couldn't return any results. I'm also concerned about reliability, since my first result showed up information I knew was incorrect, yet it is difficult to know the accuracy of the data, since the source is not automatically displayed. Google might take a moment longer since you have to open up specific web-pages, but at least you can tell whether the information is likely to be out of date, or written by someone who doesn't even know what scientific method is, let alone utilise it.

blognickwc - sounds like they need serious work on disambiguation. One of the civil parishes in South Yorkshire is Wales (comprised chiefly of the villages of Wales and Kiveton Park) with a population of around 6000....

I tried 3 very simple questions....and got the earthshattering...

"Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."

Amazing. It's clearly so clever, it's decided my questions are too stupid to answer. I think google are safe.

The search engine is sort of useful, based on my initial 'exploration'. I still wasn't able to find out how to buy foreign music (I'm trying to find a site where I can buy a year 2000 Korean song), but it was helpful and fun for looking up country statistics. However, some of the statistics are off, I suspect because some of the source information is old or faulty.

I think we need to learn how this search thinks and once we do it will get easier. To those to say 'That's not the point' remember that to get good info out of Google you have to know a few tricks when searching. This will be the same and we are just going to have to learn what they are.

The results of my queries were dire but I can see the potential so I'll come back and check again in a few months when they have worked a few more of the kinks out and added more non US data.

A search for how many countries are in the world was also incorrect, with Macau, Greenland, and Pitcairn all counting as countries (and not in the the-UK-is-four-countries sense).

I think Douglas Adams would approve! Afterall the Hitch Hikers Guide To the Universe taught us that it is not the answer that is important, but the question.

Computers are generally bad at ambiguity. This is why most Web searches succeed after we identify some specific piece of information, to define our search. The more specific an item we are searching for, the greater the likelihood of our success. Most people search the Web by trying to second-guess the kinds of things that someone with the answers that they need might have written. When looking for a colleague's professional web page, for instance, it is often better to type in their telephone number, than their name, because the number is more likely to be unique. Human beings are often quite good at this sort of guesswork, whereas computers are monumentally bad at it.
Google is good at second-guessing certain types of action, too (by presenting us with a map, say, when we type in something like "W12 7RJ" - on the assumption that we may be searching for a postal code), but it is only good at that sort of thing, because engineers working at Google have recognised that A) people using their search engine very often tend to put in postal codes, that B) UK postcodes tend to match a general, but highly regular, pattern, and C) someone typing in a postcode probably already has the rest of the address - so chances are, they're looking for directions. The search itself, is highly specific, but it took another group of human beings to see that it represented a pattern of behaviour, and that the behaviour itself had a pattern, that could be identified and handled.

Wolfram falls over because it tries to guess what kinds of questions it might be asked, and encourages us to be vague; whereas Google is built around the kinds of questions it IS asked, and encourages us to be specific.

This is a very useful addition to the quiver of tools web uses can employ to get information. I just had my quadratic equation solved and plotted and the chemical formula of ethane showed to me. Both of these were one click solutions - far faster than Google or dusty textbooks.
Wolfram Alpha is designed to produce objective data so I can see why subjective questions would fail.
Given WA's stated brief, I would say it works very well indeed.

It's an unmitigated failure.

I've tried many searches and all of them come back saying it has no idea what I'm asking, despite them being quite valid, straightforward questions to which Google finds the answers with ease.

Search for "How many species of giraffe are there?" and Google comes up trumps first result, Wolfram just spams you a load of data about Giraffes from which you can just about extract the answer from a horribly rendered diagram.

Well, Wolfram's known for his maths, so I figured I'd try something a bit more mathematical, how about "How many non-isomorphic trees are there with 6 vertices?", well, Wolfram just falls over flat, unable to help at all. Google struggles a little, but the first page of results can get you the answer you need.

"How many species of Melocactus are there?" - Google answers with it's first result, Wolfram outright fails.

"On what date was Adolf Hitler born?" - Google answers with it's first result, Wolfram outright fails.

"What year are the next US presidential elections in?" - Google answers on the first page (but not the first result), Wolfram outright fails.

"What is the melting point of steel?" - Finally! Wolfram answered! Unfortunately it was an unhelpful answer, whilst Google explained that Steel has no fixed melting point and it depends on the composition of the steel with it's first result.

I'm having more trouble finding something that Wolfram can answer - maybe it's good at really simple stuff like "What is 1 + 1?", it seems to be able to do things like this, it seems to be able to do measurement conversions too, but what's the point when Google does all this and everything else as well?

Wolfram brings nothing new, but not only that, it doesn't even bring things other search engines have had for years. It is over-hyped and effectively useless.

I asked it:
To compute a regular expression
For the mass of alpha centauri
For the friction coefficient of ice and aluminium

All FAIL

Yes I think that this was a valiant attempt, but it's just not cutting it.

Who said we needed to write out full sentences to communicate to a search engine!?

almost entirely useless.

It looks like a leaked pre-release proof of concept. not anything like i'd expect from a professional organisation.

I think they've proved that it can work, but not that it does work.

I asked the following

1. Is there a God?
No commital, however it told me it would get back to me if I entered my email address.
2. Are the Knights Templars the keepers of the Holy Grail.
3. What is Love?
4. Can rabbits sew?
5. What number am I thinking of?
6. What is an elbow?
ALL FAIL
7. What is artificial intelligence?
Apparently it's a film by Steven Spielberg.
8. Who is Wayne Rooney
A "soccer" player from Liverpool. It even gave me a timeline of his life starting in 1900 (he doesn't appear until 1985)

Good stuff - bored - wandered off.

Hmm.

I tried a fairly generic query for "web engineering", my own research area and not particularly esoteric. Not a thing.

But it did manage a power series expansion for pi, which was nice

Does Wolfram work?
Short answer : No.

I asked:
> Is wolfram better than Google?
> Wolfram doesn't know how to handle your input.

> Are you better than google?
> Wolfram doesn't know how to handle your input.

> How to manufacture LSD?
> Wolfram doesn't know how to handle your input.

> Do you know anything?
> (After a long pause) Wolfram has exceeded it's current maximum load.

Oops, I think I killed it.

In a word, NO.

It thinks there are less than 6,000 people living in Wales, but more than 117,000 living in one of it's cities.

It doesn't work, at least not yet. As someone suggested, its more like a proof of concept.

I asked it "How many lawyers in Israel". It couldn't cope with that.

OK, maybe its still US biased. "How many lawyers in California". It couldn't cope with that.

Then I gave it "Alexander Ryback", the gentleman who just won the Eurovision song contest. It couldn't cope with that.

I tried one more, more scientific question. "Common vagina disease". It couldn't cope with that either.

Long way to go guys, long way to go.

It is EXCEPTIONALLY weak in many many places.
Of course it's great with some stats, yes you can do calculations (basic ones that us normal souls want to do have been on Google for years) and theres some really good tricks but this is in no way a search engine, and in no way a Google killer.

It gives sources but in a mix rather than applying the sources to the individual answers (as you might get several when it doesn't know what you want) so you have no way of assessing it's value, just as we do with links on Google.

Weather is a good example. Ask for the temperature in Cambridge and it gives a figure that is over 2 hours old and a couple of extra figures for locations over 20 miles away. If I go into Google and search for Cambridge Weather I find a nearly live figure for a university system that is also closer.

Ask 'who is batman' or any other fictional character and it'll automatically pull the information from IMDB and Wikipedia. But if I went to Wikipedia you get masses of links to every permutation of the Batman history.

One example I saw shouting how great it was gave the example of calories of a doughnut. Amazing! But what sort of doughnut? Where was it bought from? What flavour? So I tried 'calories in a dunkin donut'. Didn't understand my question. Put that into Google and first link was to the Dunkin Donut nutritional information on the companies website.

It doesn't even give links for further information! I'm supposed to just trust them? A lot of their sources seem very difficult. I also can't see anyone accepting WolframAlpha - Primary source as an acceptable reference and if you can't seperate references out (as in normal scientific papers) what good is it?

I like it, it's very clever, but it's a massive letdown from how they sold it.

Sadly no....well not for non US based searches. Why do all these companies assume that the world is made up of the US only.

Maybe it will get better but I'm surprised considering where Dr Wolfram comes from!

You're all asking the wrong questions - try 'why did the chicken cross the road?' and you get the correct answer. I guess Wolfram does have a British sense of humour after all ;)

Type in how many people live in Scotland and you get an answer 1699!

What's all the fuss in any case, the START system at MIT have had a better system for years.

Ultimately, I think Wolfram Alpha will fail for 3 reasons:

1) It feels geeky. That alone will prevent it from being adopted by the mainstream. Everything from the name to the look and feel, not to mention it's sciency intentions could limit its audience to mathematicians, scientists and students.

2) Can users trust it? The 'knowledge' comes from its own servers and data sources, with little or no indication of source. Whereas from the internet, the user gets the perception of control: you can find out for yourself which websites look trustworthy and which search results don't and make your own judgement based on the common answer given by many. Wolfram Alpha gives one answer and one answer only - its own answer - with nothing to verify by. And can you really trust a computer to interpret a wordy version of a mathematical formula correctly every time?

3) Limited scope. Partly related to point 1, it is great as a fact-finding tool for certain pub quiz or trivial persuit questions (at least the ones in the geography or science categories) but next to useless when trying to find out news, opinion, anything entertainment related and the like. And Wikipedia, for example, does all these things already for no more amount of hassle.

Oh, I thought of one more reason it will fail:

4) Google has become a verb, the very meaning to many people of an internet search. "Google it" has become synonymous with search, just as 'iPod' has become synonymous with 'music player'. Therefore, nothing else matters, however good rival products are, and that includes Wolfram Alpha. And once Google Squared is finished, I'm afraid to say that Wolfram Alpha will be finished too.

So far, pretty poor. Its almost clever. Certainly gets some answers... but there are huge pieces of data missing.
You try putting in a search for UK Earthquakes... and then filter it down to 30 years - Greater than a magnitude of 2...

Absolutely nothing over the last 30 years.
Try putting in the name of a town like Wednesbury, or its council area Sandwell and you get nothing.
No Burnham-On-Sea... It thinks Wales is a town... I asked it for the 100th Sunday of the 21st Century... and it managed to compute the question correctly, but fail to provide an answer.

I look forward to Wolfram Beta... as Alpha leaves a lot to be desired.

Well it succeeds at least in doing what the dictionary has done for school kids. Let's you look up swear words. Had some fun with that.

It also knows the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, so long as it's a European one.

When I asked for the "answer to the ultimate question", it did indeed come up with the correct answer of 42 (according to Douglas Adams).

However, it was not able to tell me what the question actually was.
So I guess it really is just a work-in-progress.

Sigh.

I think Wolfram might have more success if they they tried to build a working version of the "Total-Perspective Vortex" (also described by Douglas Adams).

Dire. I asked it a relatively straightforward programming question

How do you convert to upper case in java

the answer?

JAVA

Quality!
Q: What is the meaning of life?
A: 42
Q: How long is a bit of string?
A: Computation timed out.

Most of my other childish questions failed......