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…
Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
111–120 of 281 posts
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#112To understand the state of Wolfram Alpha, you have to understand the guy behind it. Wolfram Alpha was a pet project of Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Mathematica. He had grand visions for it. And for the first few years, it seemed like he was doubling down on it. But then he got bored and started tackling a bigger problem: his own solution to the "theory of everything" problem -- something that has eluded the world'…
For those interested in hearing about his theory/work, Sean Carroll (theoretical physicist) did a very long podcast with him about it.
I'd highly recommend Sean's podcast in general for those interested in physics topics and prefer a more technical discussion that the usual physics podcasts.
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/07/12/155-...
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh? This was not at all surprising, someone younger than me had a lower life expectancy, while someone older was higher
This sounds bad for the state of the world?
No, people die. A 99 year old can't have a life expectancy of 70 years.
You want life expectancy at birth, by year of birth, for proper comparison.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're severely underselling Google's incapability, e.g. https://i.imgur.com/UoIZSU2.png
WTactualF? When has * ever been anything other than multiplication? Why would the resulting links all be discussing division?
I'm not certain but in this context * may be a wildcard.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#115I 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...
It doesn't work so good for times but I often use Google search to multiply numbers with units together and get a result in the units I want without having to worry about screwing up unit conversions. 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 be…
... Seriously, though, if you’re actually need this type of calculation regularly and didn’t just pick a random example, atomic-scale calculations are absolutely miserable to do in SI (and this is not a problem, it’s a human-scale, engineering system, after all; and its metrological aspects, which were the actual advance originally, are completely unimportant here).
If I had to do this in my head or with a desk calculator, I’d just do it in high-energy units (c = ℏ = 1, mass and energy in eV, length and time in eV^-1). So,
4 amu = 4 × 0.93 GeV (a proton weighs 939 MeV, an amu is slightly smaller due do binding energy, rounding to 1 GeV is good enough for most purposes) ≈ 4 GeV,
(1000 nm / s)^2 = (1e4 Å / s)^2 = (1e4 / 1.97 keV^-1 s^-1)^2 (an angstrom is a typical atomic size, a keV is a typical [large] atomic energy, a fermi aka femtometer is a typical nuclear size, a MeV is a typical [not so large] nuclear energy, remember any of 197 MeV fm = 1.97 keV Å = 1, though again 200 is almost always good enough) ≈ (1e4 / 2 keV^-1 s^-1)^2 = 25e6 keV^-2 s^-2,
4 GeV × 25e6 keV^-2 s^-2 = 4e6 keV × 100e6/4 × keV^-2 s^-2 = 1e14 keV^-1 s^-2.
1e14 keV^-1 s^-2 ≈ 1e14 keV^-1 s^-2 × (2 keV Å)^2 / (3e8 m/s)^2 = 4/9 × 1e14 × 1e-16 keV Å^2 m^-2 = 0.44 × 1e14 × 1e-16 keV × (1e-10)^2 ≈ 0.44e-22 keV ≈ 0.44e-19 eV.
0.44e-19 eV = 0.44e-19 eV × 1.6e-19 J / eV (turns out converting to a decimal fraction wasn’t a good idea after all, powers of two FTW) ≈ 4/9 × 16 × 1e-1 × 1e-19 × 1e-19 J = 64/9 × 1e-39 J ≈ 63/9 × 1e-39 J = 7e-39 J.
OK, I won’t pretend that this is easy or that I did it flawlessly the first time just now, but I do think this looks like a skill you could plausibly learn, unlike the textbook “SI all the things” calculation. The good news is that you’ve just seen essentially all the relevant constants you’re going to have to remember, except maybe Avogadro’s number if you’re going to have moles somewhere.
(One place where this doesn’t help is first-principles chemistry, things like electrolysis, because you need to subtract large binding energies to get a change that’s hundreds to thousands times smaller. Calculating things to a couple percent just isn’t good enough.)
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
A reminder that GNU Units still exists, e.g. $ units Currency exchange rates from FloatRates (USD base) on 2021-01-17 3677 units, 109 prefixes, 114 nonlinear units You have: 4 amu * (1000 nm/s)^2 You want: joules * 6.6421563e-39 / 1.5055352e+38 You have: ^D It’s slightly less DWIMish (you have to say “atomicmassunits”, “atomicmassunit”, “amu”, or “u”, not “atomic mass units”) and somewhat awkward as a separate tool,…
Thanks for the reminder =) Alas, I often have to do these kinds of calculations on a random publicish computer or my phone and Google's converter is platform-independent. But not using Google services when feasible is certainly net good. And of course my TI-89 had equally good unit conversion for practical purposes (since you can define your own units) so somehow the world is still playing catchup to a calculator fro…
If you’re organized enough to have space for Termux on your phone, it does wonders in this department. I feel silly every time I punch Python code into that teensy touch keyboard, but damned if I know anything else that has a better input UI and isn’t orders of magnitude less versatile. (Maple Calculator and microMathematics are still on the “there was an attempt” level, in my experience.)
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#117I think Siri gets some of its results from Wolfram Alpha.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also a frequent WA user. I use it for things I could calculate, but are much faster to just ask in plain text. How much that cloud instance really costs $0.03/hr * 1 month Bandwidth calculations for hosting providers 10 TB per month in Mbps
I use Google for those pretty often.
I do the same for basic calculations. I was surprised things like 9:00 EST in CET don‘t work in google search, but do in WA.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#119I used it for Calc 1 and 2. It helped me check my work for Limits, derivatives, integrals, Reimann Summs, Series, Sequences. I love the part that says "Show Step By Step" because I can figure out which step I made an error. The answers in the back of the book didn't tell me step-by-step how I solved the problem. It just gave me the answer and there are many times I couldn't figure out which step I made the error. Usu…
Same. It also has a problem generator to practice different kinds of problems (https://www.wolframalpha.com/problem-generator/?scrollTo=Cal...). Note the step-by-step solution is paid.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#120I 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…
Also a frequent WA user. I use it for things I could calculate, but are much faster to just ask in plain text. How much that cloud instance really costs $0.03/hr * 1 month Bandwidth calculations for hosting providers 10 TB per month in Mbps
You also might want to try google search. They display calculations for these particular queries and quite a few more.