WolframAlpha -new search engine which answers questions

timbim_2

It's so much more than wikipedia. For specific searches, it's great. Can google do this straight away?

hotkee

timbim wrote: »

It's so much more than wikipedia. For specific searches, it's great. Can google do this straight away?

I can see its a mathematical calculator - it recognizes formulae etc- but its restrictive. I can just see google bods working on something better than this. And its not a search engine.

http://www24.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chance+of+winning+lottery

Nothing returned.

timbim_2

If you organised your thoughts a little, then you'd soon reach the odds here. It's not a traditional search engine, it's hitting a previously empty niche. Maybe google will move to do the same things, but there's some pretty fearsome mathematical computing going on behind it.

hotkee

Hang on I knew the chances of winning the lotto - 1 in 18 million etc and premium bonds 1 39 billion or something. Its not doing any fearsome mathematical computing, just returning stored calculations.

The positive side of this is - that it would be nice if mainstream search engines (google being my favourite) had this facility already.

On a comparison with fiction - Star Trek series has computer which tells you facts and precise calculations - this Wolf thing is like that I guess. And even in star trek you could do the possible history searches which would at the moment is what google offers.

Oooer see star trek led the way! Am I talking gibbberish?

timbim_2

Except that that was fiction and this is reality. It's one thing to have an idea like that, completely another to put it into practice.

OK, you want fearsome maths? Look at this. By comparison, Google doesn't even come close.

hotkee

I do see its good but rather it be in google than another flipping search engine or whatever it wants to call it self.

The formulae you have suggested is something we could do in the 90s with software that was available then in universities. This is just transition onto the web of that software.

Wolfy would have been useful in the exams.

spud17

timbim wrote: »

Maybe not a problem for you, but it certainly is for me. Nicely done bat999. Anyone recognise my new avatar? This time drawing from chemistry. I'm a bit better at that than maths.

It's the 70's since I did my chemistry 'A' level, but it's something like Salicylic acid (aspirin)

timbim_2

Well done! Back to maths. Find x.

epninety

timbim wrote: »

Well done! Back to maths. Find x.

x = -1

... and just to stay on topic, Wolfram can do it too.

timbim_2

Did you know that before, or did Wolfram do it for you?