WolframAlpha
| File:Wolfram Alpha.png | |
Type of site | answer engine |
|---|---|
| Owner | Wolfram Alpha LLC |
| Created by | Wolfram Research |
| URL | www.wolframalpha.com |
| Commercial | Yes |
Wolfram|Alpha (also written as WolframAlpha and Wolfram Alpha) is an answer engine developed by Wolfram Research. It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might.[3] It was announced in March 2009 by Stephen Wolfram, and was released to the public on May 15, 2009.[1]
Overview
Users submit queries and computation requests via a text field. Wolfram|Alpha then computes answers and relevant visualizations from a knowledge base of curated, structured data. Alpha thus differs from semantic search engines, which index a large number of answers and then try to match the question to one.
Wolfram|Alpha is built on Wolfram's earlier flagship product, Mathematica, which encompasses computer algebra, symbolic and numerical computation, visualization, and statistics capabilities. With Mathematica running in the background, it is suited to answer mathematical questions. The answer usually presents a human-readable solution.
- Example: "lim(x->0) x/sin x" yields the expected result, 1, a plot, and the series expansion. The button "show steps" provides a possible derivation of the result using L'Hôpital's rule.
- Example: "lim sin x/x/cos(x), x->infty" is correctly interpreted as The answer given is 0.
However, Wolfram|Alpha is also capable of responding to natural-language fact-based questions such as "Where was Mary Robinson born?" or more complex questions such as "How old was Queen Elizabeth II in 1974?" It displays its "Input interpretation" of such a question, using standardized phrases, e.g. "Mary Robinson | place of birth" or "age | of Queen Elizabeth II (royalty) | in 1974".
It is also capable of performing calculations on data using more than one source:
- Example: "What is the fifty-second smallest country by GDP per capita?" yields India, $725.76 per year.
Wolfram|Alpha makes inferences from a smaller set of core information. In this way it has many parallels with Cyc, a project aimed since the 1980s at developing a common-sense inference engine.
The database currently includes hundreds of datasets, such as 'All Current and Historical Weather'. The datasets have been accumulated over approximately two years, and will continue to grow. The range of questions that can be answered will grow with the expansion of the datasets.[4]
Technology
Wolfram|Alpha is written in 5 million lines of Mathematica (using webMathematica and gridMathematica) code and runs on 10,000 CPUs (though the number is upgraded for the launch).[5][6]
Launch
Launch preparations began on May 15, 2009 at 7 PM CDT (May 16, 2009 0:00 UTC) and were broadcast live on Justin.tv. The plan was to publicly launch the service a few hours later, with expected issues due to extreme load. The service was officially launched on May 18, 2009.[7]
Wolfram Alpha has received mixed reviews[8][9]. Wolfram Alpha advocates point to its potential, some even stating that how it determines results is more important than current usefulness [8].
References
- ^ a b Wolfram|Alpha Blog : So Much for A Quiet Launch
- ^ Wolfram|Alpha Blog : Going Live—and Webcasting It
- ^ Johnson, Bobbie (2009-03-09). "British search engine 'could rival Google'". The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-03-09.
- ^ Ozimek, John (2009-05-18). "Taking a first bite out of Wolfram Alpha". The Register.
- ^ Wolfram|Alpha: Our First Impressions, ReadWriteWeb.
- ^ Wolfram|Alpha Is Launching: Made Possible by Mathematica, WolframAlpha Blog, May 15, 2009.
- ^ Wolfram 'search engine' goes live, BBC News. Accessed 18 May 2009
- ^ a b Spivack, Nova (2009-03-11). "Wolfram Alpha is Coming – and It Could be as Important as Google (But It's Completely Different)".
- ^ Singel, Ryan (2009-05-18). "Wolfram|Alpha Fails the Cool Test".
Further reading
- Wolfram Alpha: A New Way To Search?, Stephen Wildstrom, BusinessWeek, March 9.
- Stephen Wolfram's Answer To Google: If Wolfram/Alpha works as advertised, it will be able to do something Google can't: provide answers that don't already exist in indexed documents. by Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek, March 10, 2009.
- Better Search Doesn’t Mean Beating Google by Saul Hansell, The New York Times, March 9, 2009.
- Wolfram Alpha will Take Your Questions -- Any Questions, Ian Paul, PC World, Mar 9, 2009.
- Wolfram Alpha: Searching for Truth: Stephen Wolfram talks with Rudy Rucker about his Upcoming Release by Rudy Rucker, H+ Magazine.
- "A hungry little number cruncher: Wolfram Alpha search tool mines databases to yield math-based replies" by Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe, May 5, 2009
External links
- Official site.
- Wolfram Alpha is coming, Stephen Wolfram's blog.
- Recorded launch video.
- Ten easter eggs.