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Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

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Re: Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

#41

Post by anigbrowl »

kurtosis wrote: post #6

I'm very unimpressed - I had high hopes alas, here are some real queries from my lab where google gives me the right answer within 1-2 links. (or I can reach for the CRC handbook) W|A Q: speed of light in glass A: c (speed of light) and small glasses are not compatible Q: magnetic moment of cobalt atom A: wolfram alpha isn't sure what to do with your input (note just "cobalt" has the information but you have to dig a…

This has been my problem during testing. I'm very impressed with the quality of the curated data, but getting at it seems very hit-and-miss. I gave the exdample a week or two back of searching on 'Orson Welles' - you can ask 'who directed [OW movie]' and it'll tell you, but 'what movies did OW direct' (and yes I tried many variants) always gets you an error.

In this respect it feels like the sort of thing that has always annoyed me about expert systems: it's useful to the extent that you are already familiar with what data is curated therein, and want a handy way to look it up, but rather frustrating for surfing and exploration. I do like it...but I can't help sharing some people's view that it's sort of an ad for Mathematica.

It will find a use as citation source - you can embed statistics or factual info in your web page and reference Alpha, in relative comfort that the data there is factually correct. On the other hand, the lack of specificity in the citation info means it won't be quite adequate for academic use, at least not just yet. Might be that its best market will be among high school students who will a) buy Mathematica later and b) grow up with Alpha as past generations did with their slide rules or TI calculators, and stick with it as it evolves.

I didn't take time to play with the API yet - superficially it looks flexible, but I'm only a hobby coder. Much depends on where Wolfram draws the line between openness and proprietary use.

Re: Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

#42

Post by anigbrowl »

kurtosis wrote: post #6

I'm very unimpressed - I had high hopes alas, here are some real queries from my lab where google gives me the right answer within 1-2 links. (or I can reach for the CRC handbook) W|A Q: speed of light in glass A: c (speed of light) and small glasses are not compatible Q: magnetic moment of cobalt atom A: wolfram alpha isn't sure what to do with your input (note just "cobalt" has the information but you have to dig a…

Mmm, kurtosis. I like that word too.

Re: Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

#43

Post by anigbrowl »

zandorg wrote: post #25

I have a theory... They're collecting queries made with the Alpha release, and they'll just implement the suggestion (in a general form, like slurping up an alcohol database in reply to someone's query complaint), and keep adding and adding cases until it can handle 1000 times more specific queries.

I don't think there is going be a Wolfram|Beta etc...although you're not the only person to interpret 'alpha' like this.

Re: Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

#44

Post by gojomo »

Allocator2008 wrote: post #38

Could somebody please tell me why the f2k we care how fast some random bird can fly? Why the swallow? Why not the bald eagle? Or the chickadee? Who gives a f2k.

Both Google and WolframAlpha answer this question almost instantly, without soaking up the fractional attention of dozens/hundreds of human readers here. Always try the simple automated query first: it's the only polite/efficient thing to do.

Re: Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

#45

Post by nostrademons »

bilbo0s wrote: post #27
DarkShikari wrote: post #7

... Q: mass of five hydrogen atoms A: Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. Q: distance traveled by space shuttle in one day A: Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. Q: explosive energy of five sticks of dynamite A: Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. Q: number of keys on a US keyboard A: Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. Q: world war 2 deaths A: Wolfr…

Just to be fair, I tried a couple of your queries with Google, and the answers were not forthcoming either. But I suppose with Google I could do some SEO and get the answers to show up. Whereas I am not sure how to do that with Wolfram. Of course it only just came out. The queries I tried were: Q:distance traveled by space shuttle in one day A:Lots of links, none of which gives canonical answer. Q:explosive energy of…

I would've used very different queries to Google those:

  Q: [space shuttle speed]
  A: 17,500 mph
  Q: [17,500 * 24]
  A: 420,000
That took about 2 queries and 2 minutes - the first result for the space shuttle's speed compared a bunch of sources, 3 of which were in agreement.

  Q: [dynamite explosive energy]
  A: 2.1 million joules
  Q: [2.1 * 5]
  A: 10.5 million joules
Wikipedia was the first result for that, with the answer right on the page (and the text leading up to the answer in the snippet).

Curiously, a lot of people do use full-sentence queries - perhaps it's the lingering aftereffects of their 3rd grade teachers. If Wolfram Alpha can handle those correctly, it'll be a big win. But other search engines have tried - Ask.com is based around being able to ask questions in natural language. And it never seems to work that way - computers don't seem to know which of the many things you say are irrelevant.

Re: Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

#46

Post by ntoshev »

kurtosis wrote: post #6

I'm very unimpressed - I had high hopes alas, here are some real queries from my lab where google gives me the right answer within 1-2 links. (or I can reach for the CRC handbook) W|A Q: speed of light in glass A: c (speed of light) and small glasses are not compatible Q: magnetic moment of cobalt atom A: wolfram alpha isn't sure what to do with your input (note just "cobalt" has the information but you have to dig a…

You are testing it as a basic lookup engine, which is fine, but it's just a part of the offering. I tried to exercise the inference part.

Q: goog trading volume

A: works! I get a chart, but the volume is in shares, I want it in dollars but haven't been able to get that. From all I tried, only "GOOG trading volume / volume in dollars" seems to understand but doesn't show me anything. OTOH "GOOG trading volume monthly" works as expected. So basic unit conversions work, but not something like "for all days calculate number of shares by closing price" which would give me the volume in USD.

I also wanted to see a histogram of the daily volumes, but hasn't been able to. All "GOOG trading volume distribution | histogram | variance" just don't work.

A look on another domain shows that it knows something about movies (e.g. the name of the movie shows me a list of actors and other info), but doesn't cross-reference this information (the name of an actor gets me nothing, I expected at least a list of movies).

If anyone succeeds in figuring out how to get some of these answers, please reply! W|A doesn't seem to have a place where I can ask for help. Probably it just can't make those inferences though.

Re: Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

#47

Post by ShabbyDoo »

physcab wrote: post #35

Why is everyone comparing Google to Wolfram Alpha? Google is a 10 year old company! I wonder what answers Google served up on Day 2...

Didn't Google launch with little fanfare? Like Cuil, Alpha's pre-launch hype set high expectations. If Wolfram had said, "Hey, we're trying out something interesting and new...far from perfect, but we want to let people try it out and get some feedback"....then these comments would all be, "Gee wiz! Look at this idea they had for music stuff..."

Re: Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

#48

Post by J_McQuade »

Allocator2008 wrote: post #38

Could somebody please tell me why the f2k we care how fast some random bird can fly? Why the swallow? Why not the bald eagle? Or the chickadee? Who gives a f2k.

It probably says a lot about my social circle to think that I was actually horrified that there are people out there that wouldn't get this.

Maybe I should talk to a shrink... Or anyone else who didn't do science or engineering at university, for that matter.

Re: Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

#49

Post by physcab »

ShabbyDoo wrote: post #47
physcab wrote: post #35

Why is everyone comparing Google to Wolfram Alpha? Google is a 10 year old company! I wonder what answers Google served up on Day 2...

Didn't Google launch with little fanfare? Like Cuil, Alpha's pre-launch hype set high expectations. If Wolfram had said, "Hey, we're trying out something interesting and new...far from perfect, but we want to let people try it out and get some feedback"....then these comments would all be, "Gee wiz! Look at this idea they had for music stuff..."

Yah but at the same time, they never explicitly said you'd be able to do things with WA that you couldn't do with Google.

Re: Wolfram - what is the speed of an unladen swallow?

#50

Post by cyberian »

anigbrowl wrote: post #43
zandorg wrote: post #25

I have a theory... They're collecting queries made with the Alpha release, and they'll just implement the suggestion (in a general form, like slurping up an alcohol database in reply to someone's query complaint), and keep adding and adding cases until it can handle 1000 times more specific queries.

I don't think there is going be a Wolfram|Beta etc...although you're not the only person to interpret 'alpha' like this.

There already is: http://wolframsbeta.com/ :D
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