Wolfram Alpha: Real Deal?

[c***@gmail.com]

Wolfram Research, most well known as the creators of Mathematica, have
been busy working on a next generation search product some say has the
potential to be a game changer. Others may say that drawing that
conclusion is a bit premature, but the Wolfram Alpha does show
promise.

http://www.syntheticthought.com/st/artificial-intelligence/39-the-internet/98-wolfram-alpha-real-deal

[z***@netscape.net]

Post by c***@gmail.com
Wolfram Research, most well known as the creators of Mathematica, have
been busy working on a next generation search product some say has the
potential to be a game changer. Others may say that drawing that
conclusion is a bit premature, but the Wolfram Alpha does show
promise.

Well, since most current search engines have an Oprah front end
driver,
the people with actual non-zero futures use YML, Which is XML
minus the Webcam.

Post by c***@gmail.com
http://www.syntheticthought.com/st/artificial-intelligence/39-the-int...

[Shiyou Wang]

Post by c***@gmail.com
Wolfram Research, most well known as the creators of Mathematica, have
been busy working on a next generation search product some say has the
potential to be a game changer. Others may say that drawing that
conclusion is a bit premature, but the Wolfram Alpha does show
promise.
http://www.syntheticthought.com/st/artificial-intelligence/39-the-
internet/98-wolfram-alpha-real-deal

Maybe it will be a complement of Google, and then Google will make a
better one.

[rick++]

"ask jeeves" was suppose to be a natural language inquiry engine too.

No one is even close to the quantity of storage google has - exabytes
now.
But usually just want to find a couple key pages in that morass.

[c***@cafeperal.eu]

According to an article I read this will not be the same kind of
search engine as Google, etc., but will instead have massive databases
which can be queried. For example, you can ask something like "how
many Ukrainians have red hair and drive motorcycles?" and it will look
for the answer.

[Walter Banks]

I did some playing with it on the weekend. It becomes very clear that
it is harder to data base facts than it is to index them. One of the first
quireies that I entered was a question about and aspect of IEEE 754
floating point math standard. It wasn't able to identify the standard.

Regards,

--
Walter Banks
Byte Craft Limited
1 [phone]
http://www.bytecraft.com

Post by c***@cafeperal.eu
According to an article I read this will not be the same kind of
search engine as Google, etc., but will instead have massive databases
which can be queried. For example, you can ask something like "how
many Ukrainians have red hair and drive motorcycles?" and it will look
for the answer.

[Phil Sherrod]

Post by Walter Banks
I did some playing with it on the weekend. It becomes very clear that
it is harder to data base facts than it is to index them. One of the first
quireies that I entered was a question about and aspect of IEEE 754
floating point math standard. It wasn't able to identify the standard.

I tried 8 straightforward queries. It said it was unable to understand 6 of them. I'm not
impressed.

[Walter Banks]

Post by Phil Sherrod

Post by Walter Banks
I did some playing with it on the weekend. It becomes very clear that
it is harder to data base facts than it is to index them. One of the first
quireies that I entered was a question about and aspect of IEEE 754
floating point math standard. It wasn't able to identify the standard.

I tried 8 straightforward queries. It said it was unable to understand 6 of them. I'm not
impressed.

It has a way to go. It can deal for example with the generic floating point
questions but doesn't have the knowledge to deal with the reality of a
number systems limits implemented with a specific standard.

It provides a clearer more reliable result that many of the entries in
Wikipedia but this is clearly an alpha product at this point.

Regards,

--
Walter Banks
Byte Craft Limited
1 [phone]
http://www.bytecraft.com
***@bytecraft.com

[Phil Sherrod]

Post by Walter Banks

Post by Phil Sherrod
I tried 8 straightforward queries. It said it was unable to understand 6 of them. I'm not
impressed.

It has a way to go. It can deal for example with the generic floating point
questions but doesn't have the knowledge to deal with the reality of a
number systems limits implemented with a specific standard.
It provides a clearer more reliable result that many of the entries in
Wikipedia but this is clearly an alpha product at this point.

It cannot handle:

Who is president of the United States of America
Who is the governor of Tennessee
How many states are in the USA
How many stars are on the USA flag
What is the largest state in the USA
What is Usenet
How many books are in the Bible
What is the most populous country
What do you wear on your feet
How many ships are in the USA Navy
Who wrote As Time Goes By
When was the movie Wizard of Oz made