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Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

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Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#91

Post by katzgrau »

jawns wrote: post #82

To 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'…

I'm not sure you intend it, but your comment kind of makes Wolfram sounds like some sort of crank.

He's a leading thinker obsessively interested in this idea that everything around us is the product of a simple, fundamental ruleset.

He's sitting on the bleeding edge of human knowledge where, honestly, everyone is at risk of being full of shit. Scientific consensus isn't really any kind of indicator of future breakthroughs.

To each their own - let Wolfram be Wolfram.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#92

Post by portpecos »

I 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. Usually it was some dumb mistake, but by identifying the dumb mistake, I could remember to double check that similar step in future problems.

I had a hard time using it for Classical Physics to check my work.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#93

Post by nprz »

portpecos wrote: post #92

I 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, helped me quite bit back when I was taking Calc 1 and 2 for that same reason.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#94

Post by thro1 »

onedognight wrote: post #4

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…

Just asked a friend about this:

> 1 egg, two slices whole wheat bread, one slice of cheddar, two.. leaves of lettuce ..

and he said it's wrong and useless (!) - giving me examples and numbers as:

protein assimilability from bread is 40% etc.

Is there a way to get correct answers from Wolfram regarding this ?

(assimilability of doesn't work)

Edit: Excuse me, what's wrong with you downvoters - it's a legit question. Or is there something wrong with assimilability? Are you happy being off with your answers by 60% - or jealous that a human can have better answers?

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#95

Post by sva_ »

david_allison wrote: post #9

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

https://www.google.com/search?q=Mathematica_12.3.1

https://github.com/metowolf/mathematica-keygen/blob/master/i...

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#96

Post by zoomablemind »

dotancohen wrote: post #61

As someone who just signed up for an open university this semester, I'd love to hear opinions about Octave and Maxima for general purpose use. Especially for study, such as replacing Wolfram Alpha's step-by-step solutions. 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?

It depends on what your need is. I used Maxima (wxMaxima) for a quick prototyping of handwritten formulations and as a reference for some simplifications, roots etc.

Of course, its CAS capabilities are still useful. But I find that simplifications done on paper are often more straighforward, than making some expressions transform into the expected form in Maxima. Also, it's somewhat handy to have the ability to output the formulas in TeX format.

I vaguely remember Maple being more apt at expected simplifications.

Either way, I believe that Sage, Octave, Maxima etc. should be rather supplemental to textbook-based learning. In such way their results won't appear as pure magic, but as somewhat expected outcome of analysis.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#97

Post by saagarjha »

evancox100 wrote: post #76
tlholaday wrote: post #29

It's fun for life expectancy. Step one: Ask for your own life expectancy. Step two: Ask for the life expectancy of someone years' younger. Step three: What. Step four: Oh.

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?

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#98

Post by neltnerb »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #65
neltnerb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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 from the 90s...

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#99

Post by rangodang »

katzgrau wrote: post #91
jawns wrote: post #82

To 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'…

I'm not sure you intend it, but your comment kind of makes Wolfram sounds like some sort of crank. He's a leading thinker obsessively interested in this idea that everything around us is the product of a simple, fundamental ruleset. He's sitting on the bleeding edge of human knowledge where, honestly, everyone is at risk of being full of shit. Scientific consensus isn't really any kind of indicator of future breakthr…

His work is very interesting, and much of it novel, but it's the way he presents it that makes him a crank. Claiming he has a grand unified theory of physics and all that.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#100

Post by dmos62 »

jawns wrote: post #82

To 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'…

> But he was confident that he could best them all. Because he created Mathematica.

That's unkind, and that's definitely not what he says.

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