11–20 of 281 posts
Honestly, Google can now do most of the basic things that WA could do. And the more complex things WA could do oftentimes require a bunch of trial and error to figure out the correct syntax/phrasing to use to get correct results, to the point where it was just easier to either do the calculation manually or find a dedicated site for it. So it has just lost utility for me.
They put their "step-by-step" explanations behind a [login/pay]wall which made it significantly less useful. Out of sight, out of mind. It's still there
Good thing is, they have a montly cost, but the mobile app you just buy once and it works forever. And it's not that expensive iirc.
I use it regularly. Sometimes it’s broken, and maybe nobody notices but me? :) Their natural language queries for things that I know they know about are amazing. Here are some that I have used recently. You really need to see these results to appreciate them. I wanted to know how tall my daughter might be. 8 year old female 55 lbs http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=8%20year%20old%20female... I wanted to know the nu…
wow, typing "8 year old female" into a search engine might cause some trouble
What do you mean? I used it to solve a nasty impedance network for the real and imaginary components yesterday and the solutions were accurate. Edit: Maybe it's just good enough that people treat it as a tool and see no need to market it. It consistently has worked fine-ish for years and is useful at what it does.
I guess what I should be doing is looking at the Alexa ranking of Wolfram Alpha.
Probably an incredibly trivial use-case but still useful regularly for me...
WA offers answers with drawings. Google cannot do that.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+3mm+circles+p...
I use it whenever I have something mildly annoying to convert, especially dates. e.g. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1636221900+unix+time+i... Probably an incredibly trivial use-case but still useful regularly for me...
Example: 4 atomic mass units * (1000 nm/sec)^2
Google Result: 6.64215616 × 10-39 joules
I use this all the time. I use wolfram alpha for solving equations or systems of equations but I use google for unit conversions because it's got better input parsing (frankly).
I should try the wolfram alpha math entry mode probably, I think that didn't exist when I started using it. If I could manually enter the equations with stricter formatting to ensure it's interpreted properly I'd use it more.
Although for the basics of differential geometry like the Weingarten equations and the Dupin indicatrix WA is lacking - as is Wikipedia except for the articles in the german Wikipedia. And I haven't found a way to get to the 'Weingarten equations' searching for 'Weingarten', you only find him by the full name 'Julius Weingarten'. :(
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weingartenabbildung https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weingarten+equations https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indikatrix https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=dupin+indikatrix