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Re: Wolfram | Alpha: Acres per square mile? (oddities)

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg101224] Re: Wolfram | Alpha: Acres per square mile? (oddities)
• From: David Reiss <dbreiss at gmail.com>
• Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 06:03:29 -0400 (EDT)
• References: <h1vm2n$a8q$1@smc.vnet.net> <h229a7$hsv$1@smc.vnet.net>

I'd add to all of this the observation that the Wolfram|Alpha parser
is something that is evolving.  I also would have expected it to
return the result you were expecting.  So, whenever one comes across
something like this it is helpful to the W|A team to add a quick
comment in the W|A comments field.

--David


On Jun 26, 6:52 am, "Hans Michel" <hmic... at cox.net> wrote:
> Try
>
> "acre mile^2"
>
> This query returned the requisite 640 you are looking for.
>
> According to article about W|Ahttp://www.technologyreview.com/web/22834/
> Mr Weisstein put some work into the Unit part.
>
> Hans
>
> "AES" <sieg... at stanford.edu> wrote in message
>
> news:h1vm2n$a8q$1 at smc.vnet.net...
>
>
>
> > Just out of curiosity (and a current need for info) (and to start
> > learning about W|A), typed:
>
> >   Acres per square mile
>
> > into Wolfram | Alpha. Results came back (had to do a little hand editin=
g
> > of the following):
>
> >      Assuming U.S. acres for "acres"
> >   Use
> >      international acres
> >      commercial acres
> >      Irish acres
> >      Hungarian acres
> >   instead
>
> >   Input interpretation:
>
> >      acres/mi^2
>
> >   Unit conversions:
>
> >      0.3861 acres per square kilometer
>
> >      6.323 square meters per acre
>
> >      0.1563 hectares per square kilometer
>
> >      0.4047 hectares per square mile
>
> >      0.003861 acres per hectare
>
> > Don't see "640" there anywhere! -- and something seriously wrong with
> > that first unit conversion? (not to mention all the others) -- or at
> > least the way it's phrased -- more like 250 acres per square kilometer?
>
> > Went to M7, tried
>
> >      Needs["Units`"]
> >      Convert[Acre, Mile^2]
>
> >            Mile^2/640
>
> > Went to Units Tutorial:  Seems odd to see "Centimeter", "Meter",
> > "Micron", "Mile", and a bunch of arcane units listed there -- but NOT
> > "Kilometer"???  ("Gram" and "Kilogram" are in there).