Science at Collins

WolframAlpha is out and worth trying out today. It’s hard to tell whether its future will live up to its claims, but it’s certainly fascinating. (And certainly programmed with a sense of humor. Click the image at left).

It’s tricky to get used to, since it’s not a fancier Google. It won’t find references to concepts or ideas, or pull back articles or web sites, and it chokes up on excess verbiage.

What it will do is pull back data and perform some analyses. (You might be clued in quicker than me by the little orange = in the search box).

So, no, I can’t find out everything out there about Tacoma—but I can find out what the weather was like in 1980—or any year back to 1939. Or the per capita income.

Additionally, since WolframAlpha uses Mathematica technology, mathematical questions are a strong point. Enter a formula to see it plotted out and presented in alternative representations.

Note the link at the bottom for sources of information when a question involves data. It’s explicitly not a citation explaining the data’s provenance, but it helps guide the user toward more information.

WolframAlpha is clearly still in the early stages of development, but it’s very interesting to play around with and definitely worth keeping an eye on.