I have been avidly following the run up to the announcement of the Wolfram Alpha search engine. This is a new search engine which is designed to be much more powerful than Google because it includes both curated data and a vast and growing library of mathematical algorithims (brought to you by Mathematica, from whence it comes). It also has a high degree of language understanding, particularly within subjects and something called "computational aesthetics" which means it presents the resuts as a custom page of clearly presented knowledge. That, in my brief experience of testing the search engine, is true.
I could spend a lot of time telling you about the source of the engine -- it'ds based on Stephen Wolfram's research and Mathematica technology. But you can read all of that on the Wolfram Alpha site, together with lots of links to Mathematica, Stephen Wolfram and his book, and the engine.
I've been testing it out with a simple idea, putting the same query into both Google (it's competitor) and Wolfram Alpha to see what I'd get. In most cases I get an answer from both, but Wolfram Alpha gives me more information and it's very nicely presented.
On the other hand, I've easily stumped it with questions I was sure it could answer. So, for example, it can tell you the GNP of any single country, and it can give you information about recognized groups of countries like the EU, but when I asked it for the GNP of the EU, even when I tried to tell it the countries in the EU, it didn't get it. Of course, Google didn't get it either.
I'm sure I will be going back to this engine again and again (it's irrestible), but I'm not sure it's replacing Google as my "use it a hundred times a day" standard way of searching. I guess we'll see.
But you should try it yourself. It's free -- and lots of fun.
Comments