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Wolfram Research says Alpha is based on four pillars: data, dynamic computation, natural language understanding and computational aesthetics. Wolfram|Alpha is guessing, by the way in which you enter your search term, what information you're trying to find. Click the "Play Notes" link to hear the progression - and perhaps if you're an American, you can guess which major television network GE is the dominant corporate parent of. If you separate the letters with commas, you get musical notes and a visualization of where they are on the keyboard.
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This helps it guess what you're trying to find when you enter a query in its search box.Īs an example, if you type in "GEC," Alpha assumes you're asking about the General Electric Corporation. This helps it identify shorthand terms that people use to ask questions.
#Wolfram research wolframalpha software
According to Wolfram Research, the Web site uses algorithms and analyzing software to identify patterns in data. But natural language processing isn't easy. One of Wolfram's goals was to make it possible "to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer". As Wolfram explained in his March 2009 blog post, the principles in his book and the computational power provided by the Mathematica software are what led him to believe that it was possible to create Alpha. In 2002, Stephen Wolfram published a book called "A New Kind of Science," in which he explains his belief that simple rules can explain complex problems. Alpha is designed for you to ask it a question and get a factually correct answer, along with a visual interpretation of that answer. In fact, you can ask the computational knowledge engine to derive a calculus problem and not only will it tell you the answer, it will also show you what steps are required to solve it.īut remember, Wolfram|Alpha isn't a search engine, which means that if you want to find pictures of celebrities, the cheapest price on a flight to London or articles written about a specific topic, you need to use a search engine. Scientific and mathematical problems are easy for Alpha to handle. Again, if you ask Alpha for the names of different animals, you'll get a table comparing them, and you'll even see how they're related taxonomically. If you type in the name of an animal, you'll get the average size, alternate names, scientific name and even a breakdown of its taxonomy. Input several city names and you'll get a table that enables you to compare them. Results can be quite simple: Enter the name of a city, and you'll get the time of day and weather information, as well as population and elevation above sea level. Alpha then looks searches for corresponding data in its databases. To get that information, a person types a query into the search box on the Wolfram|Alpha home page and presses the equals sign to the right - the equals sign is a clue that there's math going on in the background.
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Wolfram Research employees vet all information to ensure its accuracy before it's added to the Wolfram|Alpha databases. According to the company, there were more than 10 trillion individual chunks of data on the Alpha servers at the time of the site's launch. Instead, it relies on licensed databases and content entered, tagged and cataloged by Wolfram Research employees. Wolfram|Alpha doesn't scan the Web for material.