Wolfram Alpha - a new kind of Fail

The wireless

It was on the Today programme yesterday. The Learned Presenter asked it to compare and contrast the decline in the UK's sparrow population with the decline of haddock stocks in the North Sea.

It couldn't.

It's no use to me, then.

Would you expect your Word Processor to be a Search Engine?

Ignore the media reports and just read Wolfram Alpha's FAQ.

It clearly states it is not a search engine.

Don't expect it to work like a search engine. Don't expect it to search the web.

Wolfram Alpha does mathematics, and it has a big database of constants and measurements. It uses those to do mathematics, calculations and graphs.

It is like a computerized CRC Tables (the reference book we used as engineering students with tables of formulae and charts of constants).

But the author is correct, Wolfram Alpha will only be of use to scientists, engineers, and university students.

It is not the new Google, and the hype surrounding it was stupid.

Egosim

I don't follow. Reviewer enters search using search engine's name. Search engine entirely accurately returns information on itself, focused on only notable achievement so far; its launch. Reviewer criticizes search engine for self referential egoism.

Reviewer's first search; entering own name.

My conclusion; reviewer is idiot.

Now, if only?

If only the reviewer had used MS Expression 3.3 (formerly Creature House Expression 3.3) available for free then the following would be doable (on Mac or PC)

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1gTx676hZdkHreQ7q9VjL5aJsVPv

:-)

Wolfram Alpha rocks

Oh c,mon Ted! How many other tools can tell you the calorie content of a cubic light year of ice cream? You can even filter by flavour!

http://www50.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+calories+in+a+cubic+light+year+of+ice+cream

(the answer is 1.36x10^54 btw, or 67 901 185 568 580 310 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000.0 % recommended daily amount. You are welcome)

/Paris, because shaddup

Some quality journalism.

Please.

"I've a great idea for an article. Do a few random searches, most that miss the point of the Wolfram service, then misinterpret the results, and write an article full of personal attacks on the firm's leader."

I've seen better journalism in comics.

The irony

I used Google to find the Wolfram Alpha site..

Good God almighty

Where do I start?

Firstly, Wolfram wrote Mathematica. From scratch. Carmack wrote the DOOM engine based on a SIGGRAPH paper. Which one is a "genius" again?

Secondly, square roots - integer operations are not faster than floating-point operations, there is no such integer technique (Newton's method works with reals), and none of this has anything to do with Carmack.

Thirdly, having data which agrees with Wikipedia is not *quite* the same as plagiarism. Generally people get brought up for copying passages out of it verbatim, not for using it for research into dates and places, which is kind of its intended purpose.

Finally, you want to use Google to search for web programming tips therefore Wolfram Alpha is fuck all use? Really? Well fuck me sideways. Stop the servers! They need to recode this so that monkeys can find a use for it.

Whose idea was it to get a guy who's not fit to comment on a darts match writing articles about tech in the style of Axel Foley anyway?

This article is full of fail

Nuff said.

I love this column

Always makes me smile even if I dont always agree with Ted

More of this please :D

Is there any formal documentation on the query syntax?

For a product with a pipe in the name, it certainly seems difficult to feed data from one query directly into another - and I'd have thought this was the entire point of this application.

For example, it can tell me the current value of gold per oz in several currencies (inlcuding Sterling). And it can tell me the number of ounces in a metric tonne. How then do I put both these steps into one query so I can get the price of gold in Sterling per metric tonne? Everything I've tried results in the now standard "We don't know what to do with your input" response. And the FAQs simple tell me that I'm probably asking it in the wrong way and the best thing to do is ask the community for help, when really some documentation on how to structure a query would be better.

Dissapointing...

I tried:

1) http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=biggest+piece+of+junk

2) http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=biggest+piece+of+pie

3) http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=pie

Bingo!!!!

I like ted, and he's got a point

What is WA for? There is a need for a Google2, particularly one that can distinguish between facts and rubbish. It's a sod to get two sets of data, format them to do some kind of comparison and then wing them up onscreen in some understandable format that gives you what you (or your boss) needs to see in a manner that clarifies an issue. Google might be great at tracking down a single snippet of data in all the barg that is the internet, but, I want a tool that gives me insight, not information. WA sounds great.

So, I would have thought that WA would have excelled at the first thing I threw at it: "Interest rates in the uk vs general elections". I was hoping for an xy graph that showed time with general elections marked on the x axis and the BoE interest rate on the y. Surely that's a sitter for WA?

It didn't know what I wanted. I tried variations on the syntax. Still no dice. I tried wolfing* the US data (noticing the US-centric note on the page). Nada.

In the end I typed in "Interest rate" (or "general election", I can't remember) just to get the data so I'd draw the f*cking graph myself and it still gave me f*ckbuggernothing.

Now I may be using it wrong, or I may be looking for non-loaded data, but the feedback I got from the engine didn't help me at all. I'm used to google, goddammit, and so is everybody else, so I think it's a WA problem, not mine.

That is a fail, in my opinion, and Ted, I still salute you.

*I'm copyrighting this now.

I asked first!

Allowed that during final touch-up a "select" few might advance a question, I pondered what answer might prove to be most useful to myself and humanity. The question? Will I be the Village Idiot? The answer has not been forth coming, I suspected it brought the system down until I started getting emails detailing where to blog on about "it's" wonders. Oh well, it's off to the interview.

Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input

It's a novel toy but not much more

Way too many queries come back with "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input"

If you're scottish try this

(population of scotland divided by population of uk) multiplied by 100

Then try the same for england vs uk

(population of england divided by population of uk) multiplied by 100

If you damage anything punching your PC then don't blame me!

Paris, cause even she does better than scotland

how old is paris hilton

Serious question (haven't tried it on WA...)

Is there a "twit filter" on El Reg - the sort of thing where I can nominate specified writers for the bit-bucket, and never have to see their drivel again?

Re: google squared is rubbish too

"It can't even square i."

Or 'j' (I checked, having used both i and j for sqrt(-1) in the past)

Pity - I was quite looking forward to an afternoon of squaring ludicrous complex expressions. Marginally less painful than building DNS servers.

Did anyone notice that Google Squared isn't flagged as beta? Shurely shome mishtake.

Can't get the bugger to draw me a fractal

It doesn't seem to like whatever notation I throw at it, I can't get a mandelbrot or julia set, it just reformats the function.

I suppose it's a touch processor intensive, but still...

Ted -> EE Smith ? WTF

This being a web application not even Theodore "ted" Nelson (the guy who coined the term hypertext). Doc Smith. I enjoyed the Lensmen a lot, but I never thought of EE Smith as "Ted".

If you're talking semantic understanding this thing has a *long* way to go. Perhaps study of a another US AI project called "open mind," which get people to explain "common sense" ideas to a system might be worthwhile. But that's available under a GPL. Perhaps it handles complex queries in near natural language better and it likes sentences. A richer context allows it to narrow its focus and deliver a more useful answer.

Does this thing learn so *it* gets better over time, rather than be updated by humans? If that were the case then the least impressive early results would quickly be outgrown as it bootstrapped itself upward. Some of the previous comments suggest that something is happening. If not, well it's not too impressive and likely not to get much better.

On a personal note and its just my opinion but listing Wolfram as sole creator is at least a little unfair. Project Leader. Yes. Chief Architect, maybe. Sole implementor (given its built on Mathmatica which is hardly a one man band). I think not.

Google Squared

exceptions:

times

be there

alpha

42

@David Hicks

http://www86.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Koch+snowflake

Even paris could manage that!

Pretty Poor, El Reg.

Look, just because Wolfram Alpha looks a bit like a search engine doesn't mean it actually IS one. Just read the FAQs: "Is Wolfram|Alpha a search engine? No." So comparing it to Google and finding it wanting is a pretty pointless exercise.

I heard Wolfram interviewed on the radio yesterday and he was pretty clear that it wasn't intended to be a "Google killer", but a different kind of app for a different audience. It didn't seem to register much with the interviewer though. El Reg is supposed to be a specialist publication - you should be able to understand this concept.

Still, in the spirit of this article, I've done a few test of my own on the usability of Wolfram|Alpha...

How does it compare with my washing machine? EPIC FAIL! I've had my dirty clothes piled on a screenshot of WA for ages and they aren't even wet yet. C'mon Wolfram, get your finger out!

Is that the kind of review you're looking for in El Reg these days?

@Can't get the bugger to draw me a fractal

Maybe its too complex.

The hype is the real "fail"!

It's not so much the product that's the problem, but the wild claims being made on it's behalf. As usual, a new idea comes along and those with very little idea, blow it out of all proportion by using phrases like "best thing since sliced bread" and "revolutionise" ( Yes with an S not a Z! ), next thing people expect the earth and get something a little more plain that simply cannot live up to the hype!

Is this potty-mouth diatribe necessary?

I'm not a prude, honestly I'm not, but come on Reg, this isn't necessary. After all, some geeky youngsters could well be amongst your readers and don't need this in a story (in a comment would be another matter).

Ted...

(Theodore) Logan, surely ... dude!

Another fail

Try searching for integral ( 1/x)

Took it 5 minutes to come back with nothing!

@whingers

To paraphrase: "It's not a search engine - leave WA alone."

Directly from wolframalpha.com: "Making the world's knowledge computable"

Yes, so instead of a "search engine" it prefers to be called a "computational knowledge engine" - translated that's "whatever results you get, well then, that's what it does!" That alone is enough to warrant a bad review - though I think much of the point is missed, with some of the criticism directed at the hype rather than the product... And along those lines: Yes, when it says *people* involved and only has one name - that qualifies egocentric. Unless you're suggesting he coded the entire site, its backend, etc., etc., himself...

I'm not even going to ask what rock the "Oh my I take umbrage at Ted's style" brigade crawled out from under today.

Ted missed the point again!

Amazing, absolutely astonishing, and i cant believe it!

Yet again Ted "/b/ humour diluted to be SFW" Fail , misses the entire point of the subject he is tackling.

Honestly, this guy is an idiot, with no sense of the bigger picture.

"Oh its got a search box therefore its google".

El Reg, stop polluting knowledgespace with his half-baked, uninformed written take on meme's that are so old everyone except you moved on.

You seem to want to be Yahtzee for tech , there are a few issues with that:

1: yahtzee has an informed opinion

2: yahtzee knows his audience

3: yahtzee is funny

Oh, and he never resorts to personal namecalling. Do you understand that?

He has suffuicient wit to make the mundane funny without personal attacks, i.e he has wit at all.

Ted, you really need to look in the mirror, replace Wolfram with Ted in the above article and see what i mean.