Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces • Hacker News Board

Re: Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

#21

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Jul 09, 2009, 5:12 PM UTC

aswanson wrote: post #20

Spot on. If only this were written the week before we were deluged with Wolfram Alpha articles and the attendant hype, here and everywhere else. On to Chrome OS, then Mencius. We need another reality check on the latest planet-changer.

We need another reality check on the latest planet-changer.

It's the same reality check as always: the majority of people don't understand it (and implications) well enough to really use it.

The computer revolution hasn't happened yet. It's underway, and it's going to take time to overcome cultural inertia.

Re: Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

#22

Post by sp332 » Thu, Jul 09, 2009, 6:16 PM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #18

hvs wrote: post #5

Good article (if a bit long). Wolfram Alpha has exactly the kind of interface that you would expect from a company founded by a person that wrote a book called "A New Kind of Science." Stephen Wolfram is a very intelligent person with a world-crushing, fire-breathing ego. This is unfortunate, because a more modest man could create a great tool like Alpha but then assume that he didn't know all of the ways that people…

"This is unfortunate, because a more modest man could create a great tool like Alpha but then assume that he didn't know all of the ways that people would use it, and therefore not require interfacing with it through a broken natural language engine. Wolfram, on the other hand (like many bright people) assumes that only he knows the answers and doesn't bother to think that others might be able to do more with the too…

Steve Jobs only succeeded because he could really pitch his ideas. He could make people want his product ("reality distortion field"). Wolfram doesn't have that kind of charisma.

Re: Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

#23

Post by GavinB » Thu, Jul 09, 2009, 6:20 PM UTC

DanielStraight wrote: post #3

Brilliant. Really. This article expresses perfectly everything that is wrong with Wolfram Alpha (which still can't tell me how much an elephant weighs, no matter how many ways I ask it). There are so many stories of users doing ridiculous things because of such hubristic user interfaces. Hang out with non-hackers long enough and you will clearly see how "they create an incomplete model of the giant electronic brain i…

http://www82.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weight+of+an+indian+e...

"weight of a" always seems to trigger the weight query. The problem is that it doesn't have general data for "elephant" and doesn't know to link it to "indian elephant."

It would be a lot easier if you could just browse the data. They could really have just used a good online retailer "drill-down" style interface ala newegg to make this easier.

Re: Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

#24

Post by briguy44 » Thu, Jul 09, 2009, 7:21 PM UTC

blasdel wrote: post #19

briguy44 wrote: post #2

Summary to looooooooong article. Author feels that Wolfram should have an alternative direct interface that does not required AI to interpret the meaning/goal of your natural language text query. Kind of like how Grafiti did for the Palm.

Hey, it's only 4000 words on a single subject -- his usual style is to write a series of ten 40,000 word posts using self-invented neologisms about how the media & bureaucrats really control our democracy and advocating for its replacement with Jacobite neo-cameralism.

sounds like he would be good on twitter:-)

Re: Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

#25

Post by iamwil » Thu, Jul 09, 2009, 8:00 PM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #14

iamwil wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if WA had NBA stats? How about prices of similar cameras over time? Would the same stupid people want visualizations for that? I wonder if that would that then turn it into a "non-solution to a problem"?

The author's point is that the users know they want, say, NBA stats, or price comparisons, so they should be able to ask for those.

Right. That much I got.

The part about "non-solution to a non-problem" refers how the author thought that not only is the interface a non-solution, but that having datasets and visualizations would be useless to lay people (a non-problem).

I was asking the question whether it's really a non-problem. I figured that a nutritional label is a bad example, and that if WA had sports stats or product comparison data, the lay person might be very interesting, hence upgrading WA to a "non-solution to a problem"

Re: Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

#26

Post by fhars » Thu, Jul 09, 2009, 8:28 PM UTC

amohr wrote: post #17

fhars wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it still can't even calculate: http://www07.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+attoparsec+%2F+mill...

Actually, with unit conversions, the solution is often parenthesis. http://www07.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+attoparsec+%2F+%28m... totally works

This was the point of the article. The natural language query interface doesn't work, the user has to divine the interpretation the system will ascribe to his query.

Re: Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

#27

Post by jerf » Thu, Jul 09, 2009, 9:47 PM UTC

iamwil wrote: post #11

As an aside, I don't think I agree with the sentiment of "because it's hard we shouldn't even try". Sometimes you get dead end fields. Sometimes, other useful or interesting things spring out of dead ends. That said, WA's interface leaves much to be desired. With Google (and its ilk), I can enter almost anything in, and get results. If they're not exactly what I want, I can refine it, little by little. It's like a gr…

'As an aside, I don't think I agree with the sentiment of "because it's hard we shouldn't even try".'

I prefer to phrase it as "If thousands of smart people before you have tried something, you need to know why they failed and have some reasonable reason to believe that your approach is better, or you will just be wasting your time."

I use this most often in the context of someone popping up and declaring that they wish to create a "totally visual" language. I don't want to stop that one-in-a-million guy who might make it work, but just blithely letting someone waste their time isn't very nice either. (That's where the whole "encouragement at all costs" ideology falls down; encouragement is not free and the costs are paid by the encouragee, not the encourager; think before you encourage somebody.) Usually I just see someone spout the same ideas that have been tried tens or hundreds of times before; the excited person should take the time to examine those efforts before continuing on, because the easy stuff has been tried and quite a bit of the hard stuff has been too. This goes for many things.

Re: Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

#28

Post by jimbokun » Thu, Jul 09, 2009, 10:53 PM UTC

GavinB wrote: post #23

DanielStraight wrote: post #3

Brilliant. Really. This article expresses perfectly everything that is wrong with Wolfram Alpha (which still can't tell me how much an elephant weighs, no matter how many ways I ask it). There are so many stories of users doing ridiculous things because of such hubristic user interfaces. Hang out with non-hackers long enough and you will clearly see how "they create an incomplete model of the giant electronic brain i…

http://www82.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weight+of+an+indian+e... "weight of a" always seems to trigger the weight query. The problem is that it doesn't have general data for "elephant" and doesn't know to link it to "indian elephant." It would be a lot easier if you could just browse the data. They could really have just used a good online retailer "drill-down" style interface ala newegg to make this easier.

Seems to indicate the need for a search interface, which was hinted at by the article.

Maybe the tool selection could happen after the initial query? The results from the default tool guessed by WA, then choices of other possible matches. The key word "weight" could suggest the weight query, then key word match "elephant" to give choices like Indian elephant, African elephant, etc. and allow the user to click which one she had in mind. Maybe some keyword matches for elephant from other databases listed after that.

The problem, though, is they don't have the amount of data Google can use to help predict what a user most likely wants from a given query.

Re: Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

#29

Post by jimbokun » Thu, Jul 09, 2009, 11:03 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #22

encoderer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is unfortunate, because a more modest man could create a great tool like Alpha but then assume that he didn't know all of the ways that people would use it, and therefore not require interfacing with it through a broken natural language engine. Wolfram, on the other hand (like many bright people) assumes that only he knows the answers and doesn't bother to think that others might be able to do more with the too…

Steve Jobs only succeeded because he could really pitch his ideas. He could make people want his product ("reality distortion field"). Wolfram doesn't have that kind of charisma.

Steve Jobs also was not responsible for the Newton, it should be noted, but the direct control iPhone interface came out on his watch. The Mac offered far more direct control than the IBM PC. So I would suggest Jobs also has better instincts for interface design than Wolfram.

Re: Wolfram Alpha and hubristic user interfaces

#30

Post by jimbokun » Thu, Jul 09, 2009, 11:06 PM UTC

It was interesting reading the article thinking "yeah, like the Newton" before the author mentioned the Newton and then "yeah, like the way Google routes to different applications based on the kind of query" before the author mentioned how Google routes to different applications based on the kind of query. Great minds, I guess. :)