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Re: Are you wolfing tonight?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg99991] Re: Are you wolfing tonight?
  • From: magma <maderri2 at gmail.com>
  • Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 00:06:47 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <200905191101.HAA07313@smc.vnet.net> <gv0gn0$a19$1@smc.vnet.net>

On May 20, 10:58 am, J=E1nos L=F6bb <janos.l... at yale.edu> wrote:
> On May 19, 2009, at 7:01 AM, magma wrote:
>
> > Are you wolfing tonight?
> > Not yet the title of a new pop song, but wolfing (or walphing) is the
> > new thing to do on the net. Not necessarily lonesome.
>
> > Wolfram|Alpha went live in test mode at 8:48pm CST on Friday 15th May.
> > While its fictional "city" cousin HAL comes from Urbana, W/A is
> > perhaps more "rural" coming from Champaign :-)
> > It can't yet play chess and hasn't killed anybody yet, but it's
> > nevertheless a killer app.
>
> Yes, it is a killer app.  It kills itself !!
>
>   Just type into it "Ampere's law" and watch what do you get.
>
> Or, if You do not want to bother yourself with such bagatelle, type
> in: "Map of lung cancer in Connecticut"  and see what is unfolding.
>
> J=E1nos
>
> P.S.  Of course if I type the same in Google, I am getting something.

Yes the semantic capabilities of W/A are not very impressive (yet?).
For instance: it understands that
"square root" is a unique concept, but thinks that "Ampere's Law" or
"Law of Ampere" are lists of 2 (minor) towns.
Still if we stick to the strictly technical data and use reasonably
simple input, we can get a lot of info.
That's why I wrote that it s "curated data to the n-th power". In
other words: it expands the data that is already available to Mathematica 
users and does not require you to follow a precise syntax in the input
field.
I imagine that the quality of the service will be a non-decreasing
function of time.


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