Wolfram Alpha
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| URL | www.wolframalpha.com |
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| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | computational knowledge engine |
| Owner | Wolfram Alpha LLC |
| Created by | Wolfram Research |
| Launched | May 18, 2009[1] (official launch) May 15, 2009[2] (public launch) |
| Current status | Active |
Wolfram Alpha (also written WolframAlpha and Wolfram|Alpha) is an answer-engine developed by Wolfram Research. It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might.[3] It was announced in March 2009 by British scientist Stephen Wolfram, and was released to the public on May 15, 2009.[1]
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[edit] Overview
Users submit queries and computation requests via a text field. Wolfram|Alpha then computes answers and relevant visualizations from a knowledge base of curated, structured data. Alpha thus differs from semantic search engines, which index a large number of answers and then try to match the question to one.
Wolfram|Alpha is built on Wolfram's earlier flagship product, Mathematica, which encompasses computer algebra, symbolic and elementary numerical computation, visualization, and limited statistics capabilities. The answer usually presents a human-readable solution.
- Example: "lim(x->0) x/sin x" yields the expected result, 1, as well as a possible derivation using L'Hôpital's rule, a plot, and the series expansion.
However, Wolfram|Alpha is also capable of responding to particularly phrased natural-language fact-based questions such as "Where was Mary Robinson born?" or more complex questions such as "How old was Queen Elizabeth II in 1974?" It displays its "Input interpretation" of such a question, using standardized phrases, e.g. "Mary Robinson | place of birth" or "age | of Queen Elizabeth II (royalty) | in 1974". (The answer for Robinson includes "Ballina, Mayo, Ireland", a variety of contextual information regarding Ballina, County Mayo, and a link to an on-line biography of Robinson. The answer for Elizabeth is "Age at start of 1974: 47 years", and a biography link.)
It is also capable of performing calculations on data using more than one source:
- Example: "What is the fifty-second smallest country by GDP per capita?" yields Nicaragua, $1160 per year.
Wolfram|Alpha makes inferences from a smaller set of core information. In this way it has many parallels with Cyc, a project aimed since the 1980s at developing a common-sense inference engine.
The database currently includes hundreds of datasets, such as 'All Current and Historical Weather'. The datasets have been accumulated over approximately two years, and will continue to grow. The range of questions that can be answered will grow with the expansion of the datasets.[4]
[edit] Licensing partners
Wolfram Alpha is used to power some searches in the Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo search engines.[5][6]
Wolfram Alpha supports Apple's Siri for factual question answering.[7] Apple's Siri is integrated on the Apple iPhone 4S which launched in October 2011, and functions as a speech recognizing digital assistant on the device.[7]. In 2011 Wolfram Alpha was voted Best Reference App for the iPhone on Btoe, the popular rating site founded by Colin Larkin.
[edit] Technology
Wolfram|Alpha is written in 15 million lines of Mathematica[8] (using webMathematica and gridMathematica) code and runs on 10,000 CPUs (though the number was upgraded for the launch).[9][10]
[edit] Launch
Launch preparations began on May 15, 2009 at 7 PM CDT (May 16, 2009 0:00 UTC) and were broadcast live on Justin.tv. The plan was to publicly launch the service a few hours later, with expected issues due to extreme load. The service was officially launched on May 18, 2009.[11]
Wolfram Alpha has received mixed reviews.[12][13] Wolfram Alpha advocates point to its potential, some even stating that how it determines results is more important than current usefulness.[12]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Wolfram|Alpha Blog : So Much for A Quiet Launch
- ^ Wolfram|Alpha Blog : Going Live—and Webcasting It
- ^ Johnson, Bobbie (2009-03-09). "British search engine 'could rival Google'". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/09/search-engine-google. Retrieved 2009-03-09.
- ^ Ozimek, John (2009-05-18). "Taking a first bite out of Wolfram Alpha". The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/18/wolfram_alpha/.
- ^ Bing and Wolfram Alpha agree on licensing deal ZDNet
- ^ Wolfram|Alpha and DuckDuckGo Partner on API Binding and Search Integration Wolfram|Alpha Blog
- ^ a b "Apple Siri". Apple.com. http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
- ^ Stephen Wolfram: The Background and Vision of Mathematica
- ^ Wolfram|Alpha: Our First Impressions, ReadWriteWeb.
- ^ Wolfram|Alpha Is Launching: Made Possible by Mathematica, WolframAlpha Blog, May 15, 2009.
- ^ Wolfram 'search engine' goes live, BBC News. Accessed 18 May 2009
- ^ a b Spivack, Nova (2009-03-11). "Wolfram Alpha is Coming – and It Could be as Important as Google (But It's Completely Different)". http://www.twine.com/item/122mz8lz9-4c/wolfram-alpha-is-coming-and-it-could-be-as-important-as-google.
- ^ Singel, Ryan (2009-05-18). "Wolfram|Alpha Fails the Cool Test". http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/wolframalpha-fails-the-cool-test/.
[edit] Further reading
- Wolfram Alpha: A New Way To Search?, Stephen Wildstrom, BusinessWeek, March 9.
- Stephen Wolfram's Answer To Google: If Wolfram/Alpha works as advertised, it will be able to do something Google can't: provide answers that don't already exist in indexed documents. by Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek, March 10, 2009.
- Better Search Doesn’t Mean Beating Google by Saul Hansell, The New York Times, March 9, 2009.
- Wolfram Alpha will Take Your Questions -- Any Questions, Ian Paul, PC World, Mar 9, 2009.
- Wolfram Alpha: Searching for Truth: Stephen Wolfram talks with Rudy Rucker about his Upcoming Release by Rudy Rucker, H+ Magazine.
- "A hungry little number cruncher: Wolfram Alpha search tool mines databases to yield math-based replies" by Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe, May 5, 2009
[edit] External links
- Official site.
- Wolfram Alpha is coming, Stephen Wolfram's blog.
- Recorded launch video.
