61–70 of 281 posts
I'm a Linux user and prefer an open-source solution. But I have no objection to paying a reasonable amount of money for a good commercial solution. Maybe Maple is worth looking at?
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.
My meaning was just that I saw it sometimes referenced on HN, but I haven't seen it mentioned for a while now. Hence my search and results showing 8 years since. I guess what I should be doing is looking at the Alexa ranking of Wolfram Alpha.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
When I'm making exercises to explain to my students in the math class, I use W.A. to double check the answer.
I also use it for calculation for comments in HN. Sometimes I need to make a back of the envelope calculation, and W.A. can convert the units and other boring stuff.
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...
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…
$ 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 still around but I imagine it is experiencing a bunch of competitors biting chunks out of it. A lot more people can script now, so open source packages of computer algebra systems (Sage, numpy, scipy etc.) Probably take a small bite. And then you have closed source ones to consider like Matlab. The second largest chunk probably being bitten out of it is its web and app competitors (desmos, symbolab, etc.) Alexa…
You are mixing things up here. The headline is about Wolfram Alpha. You are talking about Mathematica.
I find it faster and more accurate to use a specific package in an interpreter than query Wolfram Alpha or use Mathematica. And for the simpler things a search engine will do!
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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…
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,…
i.e. if it's x milliseconds ping, it can't be more than m miles away.
- Converting units while cooking. I prefer to cook by weight, and for most ingredients, you can do something like "2 cups of flour in g"
- Stuff I'd have used a scientific calculator in an earlier era: simple systems of equations, plots, etc.
- Comparing stats on countries, e.g. GDP growth in various countries
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WTactualF? When has * ever been anything other than multiplication? Why would the resulting links all be discussing division?
I think Google search doesn't include the special symbols, so it's like searching "48 6".
Earlier 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,…
+1 for 'units'. I like it for conversion between millilightseconds and miles, to get the theoretical best-case latency between two places. i.e. if it's x milliseconds ping, it can't be more than m miles away.