
Wolfram Alpha Live - grinich
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/
======
michael_nielsen
Many news sites (e.g., TechCrunch) have been hyping WolframAlpha as a threat
to Google, and it's natural that people are trying Google-style search
queries. However, looking at the examples at the site
(<http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples> ), it's clearly not intended as a
direct competitor to Google, and it's not at all surprising that it doesn't
perform so well on the Google-style queries people are trying. My first take
is that it's more like learning Mathematica: you need to learn how to ask it
the right sorts of questions, and the examples look like a useful way of
learning to do that.

No doubt many of the news outlets who've been hyping WolframAlpha as a
competitor to Google will now denounce it as having failed, when it wasn't
meant as a competitor at all. It's the news sites which have failed.

~~~
garply
I'm not so sure the blame falls entirely on the news sites. As I've watched a
seemingly unnatural amount of attention fall upon an unreleased product over
the past few weeks I've come to the conclusion that we're being led around by
Wolfram's PR firm. If that's the case and they were using 'google-killer' to
pick up buzz, I think Wolfram deserves to fall on its face.

(That's not to say it's not an interesting product).

~~~
est
I herd it was a Google-killer, but it turns out to be a Google Calculator
Killer

~~~
rms
It really does kill Google calculator! It does symbolic stuff, like
Mathematica.
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=y%3D+y^2+*+x^2+sin%28x%...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=y%3D+y^2+*+x^2+sin%28x%29)

~~~
WilliamLP
Wow, college math homework beware.

------
sonink
I think wolfram alpha is a better deal than Cuil, but might get as bad a name
because of their flawed positioning.

The method does not work without domain specificity. Its not a general purpose
tool. Marketing it as one is the biggest mistake wolfram has done and is the
reason most people will be dissapointed and inevitably try to slot it as
another cuil.

However, if you are willing to disregard that largely cosmetic flaw, the
computational engine is very impressive stuff. Assuming, in the future they
are able to market/position it properly for specific domains for which they
ensure that data is enough, this is going to be an awesome tool and may well
compete with Google for the domain specific queries.

~~~
stcredzero
I think the majority of the populace will not have the wherewithal to
appreciate it. The part that does will see its potential, and I think that's
all Wolfram cares about.

------
Sephr
I am very surprised with how it can intelligently generate forms based on a
question. For example, the search "Am I too drunk to drive?"
([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Am+I+too+drunk+to+drive...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Am+I+too+drunk+to+drive%3F))
generates a form where you can input various variables to answer the question.

~~~
jokermatt999
Really, if you manage to formulate that query, think about the answers, and
type them in, you are most likely not that drunk.

Edit: Still, interesting.

~~~
philwelch
Do I win hacker points for being the type of person who would think to do
exactly this while drunk?

~~~
stcredzero
You lose hacker points for posting a question staring with "Do I win hacker
points...?" But if you are only joking, you only lose joke points.

------
frisco
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+much+wood+would+a+w...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+much+wood+would+a+woodchuck+chuck+if+a+woodchuck+could+chuck+wood%3F&asynchronous=false&equal=Submit)

------
omarish
You guys need to go easy on the negativity. I think HP laughed at Woz's first
computer prototype..

~~~
dcurtis
Using it, you can tell there is some huge potential.

For example, these nifty queries:

us debt / us population / us life expectancy in days

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+debt+%2F+us+populati...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+debt+%2F+us+population+%2F+us+life+expectancy+in+days&asynchronous=false&equal=Submit)

and

(MSFT net income / MSFT employees)

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28MSFT+net+income+%2F+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28MSFT+net+income+%2F+MSFT+employees%29&asynchronous=false&equal=Submit)

~~~
tokenadult
_us debt / us population / us life expectancy in days_

What does that mean, to you, in everyday language? I see what WolframAlpha did
with that, but what is the implication of that answer for a real-world
concern?

~~~
jibiki
It is the amount of debt each American has to pay off each day.

Except, you know, it isn't.

~~~
aneesh
Assuming zero interest :-)

~~~
quizbiz
Now if we could tell it to consider interest then I would be impressed.

~~~
silentOpen
You'd need an interest function. Use historical data? Specify a regression?
Have it try to calculate last average?

Even then, you'd need to have some objective value of worth to understand what
$0.92 means. Right now, it only measures the value of the dollar. :-/

------
vaksel
I entered over a dozen queries, and only got a meaningful result for a single
one. All others were completely unrelated stuff.

Based on the bad results, I can see that this is probably only useful to
someone doing math stuff, anyone else its more or less completely useless

~~~
amichail
If this were an easy thing to do, don't you think Google would have done it a
long time ago?

~~~
danhak
If Wolfram claims to have done it, don't you think he should have done it?

~~~
amichail
I wouldn't underestimate the intelligence of computer scientists working at
Google.

~~~
cellis
I wouldn't _overestimate_ them either. Intelligence isn't as much a factor in
the fruition of this as ambition. Wolfram is more on the level of Sergey Brin
and Larry Page than the people that work for them, ambition-wise.

------
dsims
Interesting that the results are given as an image: <http://ff.im/2W5UQ> You
think they did that to stop screen-scraping?

~~~
nixme
I think it might be because the output comes from Mathematica's engine, and
the best way to render various formulas, tables, charts, etc. is to just use
the same graphical output.

------
ryuio
Search for "wolfram alpha" -> <http://imgur.com/mbda5.gif>

~~~
mojuba
At the same time "Armenian Genocide" is not a historical event, it's just a
movie according to WA.

~~~
huhtenberg
Yeah, it doesn't know what happened on April 12, 1961 and can't answer some
other trivia questions. That's not a big deal though, feeding information into
the system is far easier than _building_ the system in the first place.

------
gcanyon
Everyone should stop being impressed that it can answer complex math
questions. It obviously has instances of Mathematica available to it, that's
probably the first thing Wolfram hooked it up to.

This isn't a search engine. It's a web-based expert system with strong data-
manipulation and presentation capabilities.

~~~
paulgb
If I understand correctly, most of it is actually written in mathematica.

True, it's an expert system and doesn't appear to be anything new in terms of
AI, but it's still pretty impressive.

(edit: according to Wikipedia, "It is written in 5 million lines of
Mathematica [...]")

------
schwanksta
I'm completely underwhelmed. Chalk it up to hype I guess.

I couldn't get anything for "Most popular names in 2008," and when I clicked
the "Examples" tab and clicked Socioeconomic Data->Countries and used its
default of France, it gave me three pieces of info (country code, full name
and something else) and apparently tried to load some kind of information
underneath, but it never happened.

Maybe it's because it's launch day.

Edit: Here's another thing that bothers me. It doesn't give you the source of
its info. So when I click "Names" and have it give me info on a specific name,
when it tells me it's the 8th most popular (in 2007, nicely outdated), I'd
like to know how it deduces that rather than take it as fact.

Interestingly, there's a "Source information »" link at the bottom that
doesn't work.

Think I'll stick with well-crafted Google queries and more primary sources.

------
edmccaffrey
Obviously it isn't a competitor for Google search, or any other web search,
but it might be a competitor for similar products being developed by those
companies.

For that reason a search company may want to acquire them either before they
get too big and expensive, or to prevent a competitor from performing an
instant catch-up in this market by buying instead of developing.

Therefore, I was wondering what the market cap was of Wolfram Research, since
they aren't exactly a small, pre-profit startup.

This isn't a complaint about a lack of data, since that can be updated after
the preview feedback allows them to adjust the more important technology; I
just enjoyed the irony of it having no information about Wolfram Alpha LLC,
and only providing some useless web traffic stats for wolfram.com when asked
about Wolfram Research.

------
rms
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=can+entropy+be+reversed...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=can+entropy+be+reversed%3F)

~~~
swolchok
It knows:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+answer+to+t...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+answer+to+the+ultimate+question%3F)

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+airspeed+ve...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+airspeed+velocity+of+an+unladen+swallow%3F)

But it doesn't know "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

------
jack7890
Perhaps a silly question: is it's longterm name Wolfram Alpha, or is the
second word merely an indication that it's in alpha phase?

~~~
middus
Wolfram is the company, Alpha the product name.

------
resdirector
Maybe a good thing:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+wolfram+alpha+self+a...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+wolfram+alpha+self+aware%3F)

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

~~~
chris24
Creepy: <http://www76.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Are+you+self-aware%3F>

------
jibiki
I gave it "unemployment rate in germany in 1928".

It correctly parsed my query, but didn't have the data.

Google gives an answer (8.4%) but it doesn't come from trustworthy sources.

EDIT: "first prime greater than 1000000" gives 1,000,003.

------
jokermatt999
I've been playing with this for a while, and Hans Rosling's TED Talk keeps
popping into my mind (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpKbO6O3O3M>). It seems
like the potential of this isn't from the search, but the much easier access
to data. Once we start to see some fully developed applications using the API,
then we'll begin to see a much better picture of W|A's true potential.

------
SecurityMatters
What a completely useless site. Unless you are careless enough to run
javascript, the site will not return any information. They say "To see full
output you need to enable Javascript in your browser", but really return NO
information without javascript. I don't know what they return with javascript,
because I don't use it, like any sensible person.

------
sonink
Searched for "india" -> Firefox + CPU got hanged. Bad omen for india I guess
especially after todays election results.

~~~
peter_severin
My first search was "google" which sent the CPU to the skies. Had to kill
Firefox.

~~~
safetytrick
killed firefox for me too, using 3.5

------
quizbiz
I'm sorry but I see no connection between my results and the ones in the demo.
I'm tempted to go back and mimic the queries from the demo.

It fails to retrieve simple data, let alone conduct computations with it.
Could not find the minimum wage in my state. Could not retrieve average
income. Basic CIA Factbook stuff...

------
mynameishere
I'm afraid I can't _not_ stump this. And yet I feel as though _I_ was the one
in error...

------
miguelpais
I was expecting it to be a little more encyclopedic than it seems to be. I
mean, math stuff if awesome and although I can do it all (i think) in
Mathematica it's very good for the world to have a free tool that does those
kinds of things.

But when it comes to facts... well, they're facts... You only get as a return
the uninteresting information.

I think Wolfram Alpha can succeed if they point their strategy into something
which is rare on the web: certified knowledge. Being able to type a name of a
country and instead of getting facts, getting real information about its
history. Information that the users can trust as a bibliographic source.

Because facts are facts... they exist but they're so uninteresting.

------
chriskelley
It gave me a load capacity error with a quote from 2001:A Space Odyssey, then
directed me to a live webcast of the control center:

<http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/wolframalpha/>

------
tlrobinson
Random observation: the Wolfram|Alpha Twitter account follows the Hacker News
Twitter account: <http://twitter.com/Wolfram_Alpha/friends>

~~~
mahmud
It's a marketing technique. You follow an account with high number of
followers and some of the will find you, like you just did, and maybe follow
you.

------
blasdel
Using poorly-rendered (but 'designery') images to represent textual results is
_infuriatingly_ stupid.

Especially when there's a FOUC -- perfectly nice plain text is replaced with
gross slowly-loading images.

~~~
zimbabwe
It's not necessarily stupid. Right now, Wolfram Alpha is being hit from
everybody that follows tech news, and so it's taking a huge load of hits. The
delayed loading doesn't come from the images: look at the page as it loads and
you'll see that the longest delays are coming not from the process of loading
the image but from performing all the necessary calculations in the
background. That's the slow part.

"Infuriatingly" is a bit of a harsh descriptor, don't you think? There are a
few things that make text better than images online, and loading time is
rarely one of the factors. The first issue is indexing - but Wolfram Alpha's
results are so specific to the question asked that there's not much being lost
if they're worrying only about providing a useful service and not one that
Google hits on. The second issue is interactivity - but they provide easily
copied text, so they're taking care of that one. (That may help indexing as
well.)

Meanwhile, providing information as images means no time fiddling with style
on their part, and it means I can very easily transfer their generated image
for use online or in files and have it look nice.

'Designery'? Do you mean, 'Styling that accurately and attractively shows the
relationship between various pieces of text and their various importances'?

------
chwolfe
My Alma Mater:

Input: Virginia Tech

Results: Wolfram Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

What is this?! Amateur Hour!

~~~
quizbiz
Oh well.

It did manage to find Georgia Tech
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Georgia+Tech&asynch...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Georgia+Tech&asynchronous=false&equal=Submit)
(Even where I'm going next year, Emory University, is there...)

:P

But no impressive details or analysis for any schools. 'Tis all rather
disappointing.

~~~
chwolfe
Nice :P You can have wolfram and I'll take ACC titles and we'll call it even
:o)

------
nimbix
After playing with WA for a while it seems to me that it is not so much a
better search engine as it is a better encyclopedia. Many search results read
like condensed Wikipedia articles.

~~~
dbul
Out of curiosity, where did you get the idea that it was intended to be a
search engine?

~~~
nimbix
From thousands of articles saying it's a Google killer. And I guess I'm not
the only one who got that idea, because Google search for "wolfram alpha
search engine" returns over 600.000 hits.

Also, it looks just like a search engine.

------
dfj225
It could not answer my simple question: "Does P = NP".

Until then, it's useless :-P

~~~
jokermatt999
Been reading Abtruse Goose? <http://abstrusegoose.com/149>

That's the first thing he though of too, apparently.

------
ieatpaste
Both "NYSE 1950-2008" and "Nasdaq 1960-2008" gave me incorrect values for the
stock exchange volumes. Instead, the results were NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq
OCX, respectively.

~~~
dchest
You mean
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=NYSE+composite+index+19...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=NYSE+composite+index+1950-2008)
?

------
Keyframe
<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hi+there>

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+are+you%3F>

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+can+you+tell+me+ab...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+can+you+tell+me+about+yourself%3F)

------
stcredzero
Well, it tried out the famous (and probably apocryphal) correlation between
hemlines and the Dow Jones index. It doesn't have skirt length or hemline
data. Then I tried correlations between the Baltic Dry index and the S&P 500.
It didn't know about the former.

I guess financial isn't their top priority. Maybe there should be a new group
of experts focused on that alone?

------
silentOpen
No low-level API yet! Maybe it's just for paying customers? I saw no
indications of supported syntax (how do you group?) or data schema (what is
the smallest fact I can extract and how?). If the natural language processing
isn't good enough to read my mind, at least tell me how to speak to it
effectively!

------
buugs
Not really I got the <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/> once and when I
entered a query it redirected me to the normal launching may 2009 site.

Maybe they are transitioning servers or something but its not up yet.

------
asnyder
I was able to get the results of a single query, "our solar system" in
extensive detail. Trying another query redirected to a "launching May 2009",
after which pressing back landed me on a working search field, but mostly with
not found results.

------
resdirector
Brothers and sisters have I none...

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Brothers+and+sisters+ha...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Brothers+and+sisters+have+I+none%2C+but+this+man%27s+father+is+my+son.++Who+am+I+referring+to%3F)

------
halo
Hm. I've been avoiding the hype about this, but it fails on queries like
"Chancellor of Germany" which seems like something this should do. Am I
missing something, or is there just very little data in it?

------
tybris
Who else started with "air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow"?

~~~
alexfarran
I did. Also "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck
wood?"

------
buugs
Anyone else get an interesting error <http://i44.tinypic.com/359es9e.png>

~~~
PStamatiou
yeah i got that once (out of 40 or so queries i messed with)

------
hussong
I love how they provide a link to the launch webcast along with the overload
error message. Too bad it's not live anymore, though.

------
markessien
It's a good start.

------
alexfarran
Anyone else gettting unescaped \n in the results sometimes?

~~~
chris24
Yeah. It seems like they're sending the results back (with tons of \n's), then
replacing that text with images of the same text. I wonder why they're
displaying images instead of simply styling the text? Strange...

------
PStamatiou
i guess that means i need to buy
haswolframalphabecomesentientandtakenovertheworldyet.com

reminds me of hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com

------
sahaj
the results are not searchable using the 'control + F' functionality of the
browser.

