Services & ResourcesWolfram ForumsMathGroup Archive

[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]

Re: Re: Are you wolfing tonight?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg100012] Re: [mg99956] Re: [mg99939] Are you wolfing tonight?
• From: "David Park" <djmpark at comcast.net>
• Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 00:18:01 -0400 (EDT)
• References: <200905191101.HAA07313@smc.vnet.net> <24152206.1242812031471.JavaMail.root@n11>

Yes, for most things Wolfram Alpha is thin gruel. I wanted to get the
increase in budgets of Hoover vs. Roosevelt and it didn't understand the
question. I asked for U.S. Budget 1928 - 1932 and there was no data. I asked
for U.S. Inflation History and all I got was thin gruel, which was also
incorrect because W|A forgot to multiply by 100 to get percent.

But when I looked up 'inflation' in Wikipedia I quickly obtained a graph of
U.S. inflation and deflation from the 1600's to the present.

What W|A is better at is scientific data. What it is best at is doing
Mathematica calculations. So, essentially WRI is giving the super calculator
aspects of Mathematica away for free.

For me, this raises the question: Why doesn't WRI give away Mathematica
PlayerPro for free, and make it easy to obtain and install? Then anyone
could read a dynamic Mathematica notebook, just as anyone can read a PDF
document with Acrobat Reader. Nothing would do more to promote sales of the
full Mathematica and it would be a real service to science in promoting
greatly improved scientific and technical communication.


David Park
djmpark at comcast.net
http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/ 



From: J=E1nos L=F6bb [mailto:janos.lobb at yale.edu]


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.

• References:
  • Are you wolfing tonight?
    • From: magma <maderri2@gmail.com>