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Starting to Demo the Wolfram Language [video]

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Starting to Demo the Wolfram Language [video]

#11

Post by anigbrowl »

primitivesuave wrote: post #6

I worked on Mathematica for 2 years, and really the biggest downside is how its an incredibly powerful tool that fails in many practical applications. It failed to power the backend of a search engine (Wolfram Alpha), and based on my latest version of Mathematica, the dynamic computing features, visualization, and JIT compilation features still have a long way to go. It's an incredible and fascinating tool when you'r…

What happens if you run it on itself - eg you do some sort of basic program with a little bit of structure and generate code from it, and then analyze the code, eg to make a graph of it (if that makes sense). Or to put it another way, what are the possibilities of making better tools Mathematica (or Wolfram Language or whatever it is called now) using Mathematica?

Re: Starting to Demo the Wolfram Language [video]

#12

Post by troymc »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #4

First, as random internet commentator guy, I want to thank Stephen for his contribution here. This and NKS are incredible. Second, I keep seeing videos and articles about Wolfram Alpha and am always left scratching my head kinda going "WTF?" So it's a knowledge-based purely symbolic programming language? Can it play Flappy Bird? Power the next cool startup? Give me an answer to a question I might have today? I've bee…

I was playing around with Wolfram Alpha yesterday and found this page of examples:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/

Re: Starting to Demo the Wolfram Language [video]

#13

Post by [deleted] »

prezjordan wrote: post #10

This seems super exciting. I'm not sure if you could build large-scale applications with it, but I cannot wait to play around with it. Side note: The use of "I" and "My" really irks me. I imagine many, many people made this happen and contributed to these design goals. I guess this shouldn't take away from how cool this technology is, but it definitely leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[deleted]

Re: Starting to Demo the Wolfram Language [video]

#14

Post by RogerL »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #4

First, as random internet commentator guy, I want to thank Stephen for his contribution here. This and NKS are incredible. Second, I keep seeing videos and articles about Wolfram Alpha and am always left scratching my head kinda going "WTF?" So it's a knowledge-based purely symbolic programming language? Can it play Flappy Bird? Power the next cool startup? Give me an answer to a question I might have today? I've bee…

Q:"What is the standard deviation in height for humans?"

A: inches and people are not compatible

whereas:

Q: what is the average height of humans? A: 5.3, with a nice graph showing the +- sigma

So it had the info, but just couldn't understand the question.

Whereas Q: what is the average height of male humans in Canada?

gives me an answer and chart "weighted for USA demographics".

If I change 'canada' to USA, I get a graph labelled the same, but with a different numerical value.

I don't think I trust this. At least with Google and I can inspect the source, read links, and so on.

One more: "What is a basis vector"

Wolfram gives me the stock quote for BASI, google starts things off with the linear algebra definition followed by a lot of relevant links.

Re: Starting to Demo the Wolfram Language [video]

#15

Post by tedsanders »

primitivesuave wrote: post #6

I worked on Mathematica for 2 years, and really the biggest downside is how its an incredibly powerful tool that fails in many practical applications. It failed to power the backend of a search engine (Wolfram Alpha), and based on my latest version of Mathematica, the dynamic computing features, visualization, and JIT compilation features still have a long way to go. It's an incredible and fascinating tool when you'r…

Could you give some more detail on how it failed to power Wolfram Alpha? Did they switch to an alternate language?

Re: Starting to Demo the Wolfram Language [video]

#16

Post by tedsanders »

RogerL wrote: post #14
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #4

First, as random internet commentator guy, I want to thank Stephen for his contribution here. This and NKS are incredible. Second, I keep seeing videos and articles about Wolfram Alpha and am always left scratching my head kinda going "WTF?" So it's a knowledge-based purely symbolic programming language? Can it play Flappy Bird? Power the next cool startup? Give me an answer to a question I might have today? I've bee…

Q:"What is the standard deviation in height for humans?" A: inches and people are not compatible whereas: Q: what is the average height of humans? A: 5.3, with a nice graph showing the +- sigma So it had the info, but just couldn't understand the question. Whereas Q: what is the average height of male humans in Canada? gives me an answer and chart "weighted for USA demographics". If I change 'canada' to USA, I get a…

To be fair, normally you say the standard deviation "of" a distribution, not the standard deviation "in" a distribution. When you use the word "of," the query works fine.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+standard+de...

Re: Starting to Demo the Wolfram Language [video]

#17

Post by sadfaceunread »

The best parts are the natural language inputs and inherent connectedness with data. These are going to eventually become expectations that you'll have interacting with computer systems in general.

Having a computer interface that lets you say, find out who in my office is sending the most email, in a one liner is the next logical step. Including and understanding your company / personal data in the way Wolfram Alpha understands its curated data is the missing link.

I'd be really interested in integration with enterprise resource planning software, and customer relational management software for big corps. For web firms an interface to salesforce.com, an interface to your web analytics data, your support ticket dashboard, your web marketing data. I imagine being able to simply ask questions like how does the weather in my customers location impact my conversion rate? Or other poignant questions mixing internal and external data seamlessly.

Re: Starting to Demo the Wolfram Language [video]

#18

Post by dnautics »

lmg643 wrote: post #3

Any ideas of how the Wolfram Language can be re-used in other commercial applications? Seems pretty powerful capability, in theory you could build a ton of services on the back of this, much like google, only with some new interesting hooks.

IIRC the stealth biotech startup "emerald therapeutics" is using mathematica to automate everything.

I actually am personally biased against this startup, but it is a fascinating use case.

EDIT: https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/customer-stories/researc...

Re: Starting to Demo the Wolfram Language [video]

#20

Post by sadfaceunread »

dnautics wrote: post #18
lmg643 wrote: post #3

Any ideas of how the Wolfram Language can be re-used in other commercial applications? Seems pretty powerful capability, in theory you could build a ton of services on the back of this, much like google, only with some new interesting hooks.

IIRC the stealth biotech startup "emerald therapeutics" is using mathematica to automate everything. I actually am personally biased against this startup, but it is a fascinating use case. EDIT: https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/customer-stories/researc...

Really interesting use case. I'm super impressed with the concept, of automated data generation and gathering and having a common platform for the company. Perhaps the most impressive idea is that the data that is generated appears to be programatically accessible. I haven't worked in a large enterprise that has advanced past unsearchable and poorly indexed excel files that are manually manipulated/updated floating around on shared drives.

This wolfram implementation seems great, but I wonder about a lot of the annoying 'hard stuff' that would occur in a larger environment, handling of permissions different user roles etc.

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