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Wolfram Alpha, apparently the future of everything, sucks.

Twilight

Twilight

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WA debuted to enormous hype.

The Google killer.
The future!
The engine that will change the way we search.


Uh huh.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/19/dziuba_wolfram/

The engine is receiving terrible reviews, and manages to fail on surprisingly stupid levels.

Try it yourself!

http://www91.wolframalpha.com/

Try out some *basic* searches about HUGE world events.


http://www91.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Barack+obama+supreme+court+pick

Compare them to what Google will give you

http://www91.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=What+is+the+worst+natural+disaster+in+history?

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=What...oogle+Search&aq=f&oq=undefined&fp=EPM4eul9pXk
 
I tried it yesterday. I found it run very slowly, the output was irrelevant, and what was displayed was poorly formatted and difficult to scan through.
 
It doesn't seem to know much about beyond-high-school theorems or software packages, which are things I'd think something like this would excel at.
 
Yeah, I tried a couple of things yesterday and it refused to understand much of what I was saying, or allow different permutations if it wasn't quite going right.
 
input.png


Oh!
 
It appears it can only answer things it's creator told it about. So if he already knew all this stuff to program it with, why did he bother with it? :confused:

I think I'll stick to Google.
 
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I wrote something about 5 mins ago and it's still churning looking for an answer.

Well i've put in some other questions and it does seem to be quite good but still needs a hell of a lot of work.

Anyone by any chance typed in Star Trek?
 
Now i'm pissed. I typed in Yorkshire and it gives me statistics for Yorkshire Virginia USA. :mad:
Yorkshire has a population of 5 million and a rich diverse lengthy history and yet it gives me info on Yorkshire Virginia with a population of 6732? :mad:

If I type in Yorkshire England it gives me stats for Yorkshire Virginia and stats on the whole of the UK. :mad: It doesn't even give stats on England, it gives stats for the whole UK.

I'm sticking with google.
 
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So some defenders of WA have been saying, "it's not a search engine - you're supposed to ask it questions" (like Ask Jeeves, except it's less useful, because it doesn't give you freaking web links).

So let's play along and ask WA some *basic* questions that you'd get the answer to in 1 second from google:


http://www91.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+casualties+in+the+iraq+war

http://www91.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+space+shuttle+flights+have+there+been?

http://www91.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=What+was+the+final+battle+of+the+american+civil+war?

http://www91.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=What+is+the+highest+grossing+movie+of+all+time

http://www91.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=who+was+the+first+person+to+fly+in+space


Are you freakin' kidding me? :rolleyes:

Talk about hype. It's almost broken.

And yes, I know it'll plot anything you want it to. But if I were going to be making plots, I'd do it in Mathematica or Matlab or mathcad or Maple or IDL or Supermongo or etc. etc. etc.
 
Why are you guys treating this as a search engine? It isn't, and doesn't seem to be claiming to be one. But all these searches you guys seem to be throwing at it have absolutely nothing to do with the computational abilities it is offering.

What I see here is critiques that are similar to complaining when a calculator is unable to provide the basic definition of words. Mistaking a calculator for a dictionary may seem like an extreme comparison, but I'm not sure how anyone could mistake Wolfram Alpha for an internet search engine.

The right tool for the right job... if you don't know what a specific tool is for, don't use it.




That having been said, it has short comings within it's defined area of use. One odd result was that it didn't recognize Real Projective Plane, but did return a result for Boy's Surface (a unique immersion of the Real Projective Plane into Euclidean three-space).

Of course correction of these types of errors/omittions will be hampered by all the pointless searches that should never have been directed at the service, but that is the price of this type of thing being made available to the general public. The general public is often not helpful in this type of endeavor.
 
So just what is the population of England? let's ask it again shall we.

LINK erm.........no that's not quite the answer i'm looking for.

JoeZhang said:
Indeed, as this thread has shown, people think it's a search engine and it isn't.
Click to expand...

Wait a minute, you type something in, it searches for the answer and then gives you the information. Isn't that somewhat how a search engine works? :cardie:
I am flabbergasted by your statement.
 
From its FAQ
Is Wolfram|Alpha a search engine?
No......

Everyone who fails to understand this shouldn’t be using it. Of course it does nothing when you type in superbowl, what did you expect would happen? Wolfram doesn't give links as it’s NOT a search engine. Ask it about the properties of H2SO4, ask it to solve "x^2 sin(x) = 10" ask it about the doppler shift of a 300Hz sound at a relative speed of 75mph. Ask it about the date of birth of Paris Hilton if you can't help it but don't ask it about her current boyfriend or pretty pictures it won't give those.
Bottom line is used it to get objective facts, things that can be solved with computation and mathematics ask those.
 
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