Our team is hard at work going through the tens of thousands of comments, suggestions, and questions coming in about Wolfram|Alpha.
We thought you’d enjoy hearing Stephen Wolfram respond to some of this feedback directly.
This Thursday, June 4, at 4 pm US CDT, we invite you to join us for a live webcast as Stephen answers some of the questions you’ve sent in. He’ll discuss the problems, the fixes, the future, and more.
If you have a question you’d like Stephen to answer, post it as a comment to this blog post.
We’ll also be taking questions live on the justin.tv chat during the webcast.
Thanks again for all of your interest and support. We look forward to sharing this live webcast with you.
OTRA COSA NO PONEN LA PAGINAEN ESPAÑOL POR SENCILLAMENTE EL ESPAÑOL ESUNA LEGUA MAS DIFICIL ,AMPLIA Y COMPLEJA….
Y ES VERDAD
I hope we can use this technology as soon as possible,i just cannot wait,thank you for work anyway.
Las ciencias y tecnologias SON EN INGLES.
No hay interes de usar una lengua mas compleja en este caso.
Ponetelo en la cabeza:las ciencias son en ingles(y eventualmente ruso)
Krasnopolsky
PD:con tu espanol no llegariamos muy lejos.Has leido lo que has escrito y como?
prove 1/2 base of a triangle * height of a triangle = area of any triangle
Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input
jim
The long road to the democratization of technology is only simple when people intend it to be.
Thanks, for your efforts. But more important to us all — thank you for your intentions. They are what really define the use of technology.
And to all the business minded concerns. This is not a soft issue. To those who look deeper, this is about our most critical and positive instinct to survive and live with integrity.
Salvatore Rasa
A couple of small things:
1. Inputting 6 May 1946 resulted in a page which said that an “observance” for that day was the May Bank Holiday (UK). But there wasn’t such a holiday in 1946. This is a recent introduction.
2. In the Physics section it didn’t recognise the question ” What is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle?” or even Heisenberg. Odd.
Seems lots of chatter so far…
When do i get to drive ?
How could you get England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland so completely and utterly wrong? They are the 4 main countries that are united in the United Kingdom. England is not the same as the UK. Scotland still exists. The most important Wales is not the town of 6000 people near Rotherham, and as for Northern Ireland “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.”
You manage to get the US states perfectly - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are pretty much the same thing, but for the UK.
Yes, apart the Rolling Stones.
Cuando estara disponible para todos en Chinese, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian ?
Buena Suerte
Saludos
Wann man für alle auf spanisch vorhanden ist, chinesisch, Franzosen, Italiener, Portugiese, russisch?
Viel Glueck
Grüße
Quand être accessible pour tous en Spanish, Chinese, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian ?
Bonne Chance
Salutations
Quando essere accessibile per tutti in spagnolo, cinese, German, francese, Portoghese, russo?
Buona fortuna
Saluti
Quando ser acessível para tudo em espanhol, chinês, German, francês, italiano, russo?
Boa sorte
Cumprimentos
????? ???? ???????? ??? ???? ? ?????????, ????????, ???????, ?????????, ?????????? ?
?????
???????????
volfram alphan?n türkçesi yokmu akada?lar ?
W|A query read my full name as three surnames. I’m assuming this is due to an inherent comparison assumption. Interesting stats on names by ethnicity. (However, the cell descriptors do not render well - consider a vertical alignment of text when wrapping produces 1 digit per row.) In the bottom right section of the results page, user is offered chance to search the web on the phrase - and it takes a user directly to Google. I would recommend you update the parameters being passed to perform an exact match on phrase by including “[phrase]“. And in queries where the phrase is a domain, bypass sending to a search engine altogether and take user directly to the specified URL.
El idioma español va a ser sencillamente imprescindible para su futuro éxito en el mundo , su proyecto debe ser global. Un saludo. Vicente
Mi querido amigo,teoricamente tienes razon.
nO QUIERO REPETIRME Y NO SE REALMENTE LA SOLUCION.nO PODEMOS PERDER TIEMPO.eSTAMOS ANTE UNA REVOLUCION INDUSTRIAL.
lAS CIENCIAS SON EN INGLES.
pUNTO Y APARTE.
sI TU FUERAS UNA PERSONA NORMAL,EVOLUCIONADA LO SABRIAS.pOR SUPUESTO ,EVENTUALMENTE ,SUPONGO VA A EXISTIR UN GRUPO QUE TRADUZCA AL ESPANOL.
pERO NO ES NUESTRA PRIORIDAD
Si no sabemos decir cosas inteligentes, mejor no digamos nada. Una persona que medio sabe de computadores y algunas aplicaciones no es quien para hablar de ciencia, lenguaje y educación. Con comentarios como el de: “el lenguaje de la ciencia es el ingles”, solo demuestran su ignorancia y nos causan a todos los hispanohablantes vergüenza ajena.
La verdad, pienso que el lenguaje de las ciencias exactas es la matemática y eventualmente para personas con un nivel alto en estudios de ciencias e ingeniería el ingles no es un mito y es muy importante para el desarrollo actual en cualquier campo. Sin embargo, hay otras ciencias y áreas del conocimiento (como la filosofía), donde las traducciones pobres que ofrece el ingles no son suficientes. Así que eso justifica la importancia de no ser arrogantes y decir que el lenguaje de la ciencia es el ingles (me parece que ese comentario es de personas con un nivel de conocimiento muy superficial y sin ningún fundamento para hablar de ciencia. Tal vez saco su definición de ciencia de algún manual para dummies o Mario Unge en su defecto). Por otro lado, estamos encarando una tecnología que esta enfocada a todas las personas, sobre todo quienes no saben como buscar información de calidad en la red. Aquellos que estamos empapados de temas específicos, sabemos donde encontrar información de calidad, pero para la persona del común o que se esta educando es muy importante un buscador de calidad que este a su disposición y en su lenguaje natural. Nadie nació aprendido y es un camino que todos seguimos constantemente. Por favor no seamos ignorantes respecto al conocimiento y sus procesos. Te recomiendo Habermas o Foucault…. O que por lo menos empieces a leer algo diferente de las noticias del messenger y el facebook… O mas bien, que empieces a estudiar una carrera, no sigas desperdiciando tu evolución, el conocimiento real te espera. Me alegra que empiecen con un desarrollo como este ya que personas ignorantes como tu, podrán tener acceso a información de calidad que les evitara vergüenzas como esta en un futuro. Recuerda, el Internet esta lleno de basura, sacala de tu cabeza y llenala con conocimiento real.
AVEZ-VOUS PREVU UNE PRESENTATION EN FRANCAIS?
IL SERAIT INTERESANT PRESENTER CE SITE EN D AUTRE LANGUE .
MCI
ABRIL
I have a one man fabulous website which gets high praise from some of the top writers and librarians in the world but has never been well served by search engines. What would yours do?
i am a chinese, so i can not express me clearly.
???????????????????????????
Can u speak in chinese?
What is the load capacity at any given time in terms of amount of users?
Are there any plans to open source its data banks creating a data pool similar to wikipedia therefore increasing its ability to compute knowledge?
Would you make your stats live to the net?
Wolfram Alpha Team
In Uruguay, for the past eight years and from the private sphere, we have promoted the use of telework as a way to generate employment and reduce migration. Here we teach using Internet as a tool for work and education.
In this context, we learned to use Wolfram Alpha last week and began to teach how to use it. The first conclusions are:
1. It is a very useful tool for education in primary and secondary schools, in subjects like Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, Music, and Finance.
2. It is a very useful option when looking for information that includes numerical data or comparisons between numerical data.
3. Yet it is useful to find information that does not include numerical data. In such cases, the information generated is incomplete or nonexistent. For example, the search for “telework” word produces incorrect results.
4. Yet it is useful to look for information in languages other than English. For example, the search for “teletrabajo” word (in Spanish) does not produce results.
5. Yet it is not advisable to compare search engines like Google or Yahoo with Alpha Wolfram because Google or Yahoo have built their databases for over 10 years of surfing Internet. Wolfram Alpha is a new tool, complementary to existing ones.
6. The learning curve of Wolfram Alpha is high compared with the learning curve of Google or Yahoo. Because Google and Yahoo are “search engines for information”, while Wolfram Alpha aims to be a “knowledge search engine “. Information and knowledge are different levels of abstraction. Conceptual, temporal and technologically is more complex construct, classify and search in knowledge bases that in information bases.
Note: With regard to point 1 it is worth remembering that Uruguay will be in 2009, the first country in the world in which all students and teachers of primary schools have an OLPC laptop (here known as Plan Ceibal).
Best regards
Wilson Santurio, Montevideo, Uruguay
I can see it doing the computations just fine. But , what do you think about putting the steps in place as well. Don’t you think providing steps on how the computation was done would be more handy so that we can also use our brain for similar problems next time, or to advance it out for future. If, I only get the result, that is just making us useless. What do you think about detail steps on the problems solved as an option during computational search.
Thanks,
Wolfram Alpha Team
En Uruguay, durante los últimos ocho años y desde el ámbito privado, hemos promovido el uso del teletrabajo como un modo de generar trabajo y disminuir la emigración. Aquí enseñamos a usar Internet como herramienta de trabajo y educación.
En este contexto, ya aprendimos a usar Wolfram Alpha y ya la semana pasada comenzamos a enseñar como usarlo. Las primeras conclusiones son:
1. Es una herramienta educativa muy útil en la escuela primaria y secundaria, en materias como Matemáticas, Física, Química, Geografía, Música y Finanzas.
2. Es una opción muy útil cuando la información que buscamos incluye datos numéricos o comparaciones entre datos numéricos.
3. Aún no es útil para buscar información general que no incluye datos numéricos. En esos casos la información que genera es incompleta o inexistente. Por ejemplo, la búsqueda de la palabra telework (en inglés) produce resultados incorrectos.
4. Aún no es útil para buscar información en otros idiomas que no sea el inglés. Por ejemplo, la búsqueda de la palabra teletrabajo (en español) no produce resultados.
5. Aún no es recomendable comparar Wolfram Alpha con buscadores como Google o Yahoo. Porque estos últimos tienen bases de información construidas durante más de 10 años de navegar Internet. Wolfram Alpha es una herramienta nueva, complementaria a las existentes.
6. La curva de aprendizaje de Wolfram Alpha es alta comparada con las curvas de aprendizaje de Google y Yahoo. Porque Google y Yahoo son “motores búsqueda de información” mientras que Wolfram Alpha pretende ser un “motor de búsqueda de conocimiento”. Información y Conocimiento son niveles de abstracción diferentes. Conceptual, temporal y tecnológicamente es más complejo construir, clasificar y buscar en bases de conocimiento que en bases de información.
Nota: Con respecto al punto 1 cabe recordar que, Uruguay será, en 2009, el primer país del mundo en el que todos los alumnos y maestros de la escuela primaria tengan una laptop OLPC (conocido aquí como Plan Ceibal).
Cordialmente
Wilson Santurio, Montevideo, Uruguay
When i do a search in wolframalpha and the results come up could the curser please stay at the end of the search word. This will greatly speed up the search process by letting the uses backspace and change the word for another rapid change to the word search.
I use a search results URL to email to others in a high IQ group that I daily communicated with. For example the other day I searched WA with “Israel New Zealand” and the results compared the vital stats of the two nations. The URL let others compare and contrast the results and this supported my message to the group. Can WA do this for three country inputs?
i tried it with 26 countries and W|A still compares the relevant data
http://www63.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Israel+New+Zealand+Germany+Togo+Cuba+Iran+Iceland+Peru+Ivory+Coast+
Angola+Myanmar+Somalia+Vatican+Japan+Mongolia+Madagascar+Micronesia+Romania+
Spain+Bangladesh+Indonesia+Russia+China+USA+Canada+Brazil
and this way i noticed the maximum of characters you can input to W|A –> 200 characters!
I really appreciate your effort to give the world a powerful tool for education, investigation and generally in culture. World is to wide and too old that I think it´ll take a long time before this site reaches completely its objectifs, but with the help of all users will be easier to do it. I hope all og us could give a little help to reach better reults.
I Like this Website!!!
Hi xlion u know chinese??? ???????? ????
Very much hope that you know that many Chinese. However, the net write Chinese will be the question mark(?). Therefore, it is only in English to tell you the Chinese people are now unwilling to speak Chinese! ! !
Briefly put, I don’t want a “genius oracle” as much as I want a “genius lab assistant”. Most search engines seem to be designed as oracles first, with an open door for the public to come in, ask a few questions (with very little context), and then leave. The engines are moving in the direction of customizing their results for the individual user, of course, but such customization seems to be in the early stages.
In contrast, when I’m doing my research, I’d like a search system that “knows” things like the topic area, my starting knowledge, my goals (which may be months away), my usual procedures and research methodology, and my progress to date. A human lab assistant can understand such things, and it greatly affects the answers they give me. I’m willing to provide such contextual information to a search engine, but I don’t know of any search system that even has an API for defining things like “this is my topic area for today”, much less “here’s the procedure we usually follow when trying to find a protein that will yield a desired nanoscale structure”.
Are there plans for Wolfram|Alpha to have an API or other sophisticated system for carefully defining the context of my searches, or are the plans for customization still limited to the traditional approach. By “traditional approach”, I mean things like allowing the user to add some extra parameters on the individual search, and collecting some broad statistical data about the user. I realize that you’re continually trying to add better customization, I’m just wondering what model you’re using to perform such customization — oracle, lab assistant, or something else.
Hi
How competent are you guys with the other huge serch engine’s . What are you unique at ?
Cheers
Reddys2Rule
wann kann ich in deutscher sprache wolframalpha lesen?
beste gruesse - johannes
You have dubbed the application a ‘computational knowledge engine’. I chose to play a pseudo-Godelian game and asked a simple quasi self referential question. The dialog follows
Question: what is a ‘computational knowledge engine’? Answer: Me
Next question: What is ‘me’? Answer: US state of Maine
Clearly a lot of work needs to be done at the base level - has publication been a bit hasty and premature?
Hi I would like to measure the hits to brand-e.biz and to the articles I write - I cannot find out how to do this on Wolfram? Is there a way of tapping metrics on WA? thank you
Stephen
Linguistics, appears to me you said, is the current problem. If my questions isn’t too technical, in today’s webcast please give a typical example of an unsolved problem. I ask this not as a spy please but as a friend truly interested with my unpublished arsenal on linguistic discoveries ready to blast for the sake of WA. Provided you throw me to the face the central universal and unsurpassable linguistic problem. For IT and search engine in particular, which I ignore. Yours Demo Theoktistu, physicist Athens GR
My post is more of a comment than a specific question.
See my twitter website for a log of some questions I threw at Wolfram Alpha and the results.
I had expected Wolfram Alpha to provide much more of the sort of information I find at mathworld.wolfram.com , i.e., information about mathematical objects (SO(3), SU(2), E8, etc.; “What’s the transfer function of a 1st order RC lowpass?”), theorems, and algorithms (de Casteljau algorithm, “How do i rasterize a Bézier spline?”) if I enter their name.
I would also have expected it to understand Mathematica syntax, e.g.,
NestList[{Last[#], Plus @@ ##} &, {1, 1}, 20];
Divide @@ Reverse[#] & /@ %;
N[%]
But I do have a specific question:
#wolframalpha doesn’t give me Stephen Wolfram’s Erdös number. Boo.
So, what is it?
I have a question about the Content Submission Policy, if one chooses
to participate. The policy states that when you contribute to
Wolfram|Alpha, “…you are giving it to Wolfram Alpha LLC … free and
clear, to do with anything and everything we choose. Your submission
has to include a transfer/disclaimer of all intellectual property
rights…”. This is in strong contrast to the Wolfram Demonstrations
Submissions Policy, which states the author “will retain ownership of
the copyright in the material you submit” and that Wolfram is merely
licensing the work.
The big question in my view is: if I submit Mathematica code to
Wolfram|Alpha, am I subsequently prevented from publishing that code
in an academic paper or book later?
Que os ocurre con el 3º idioma mundial = el español
Éxitos en su iniciativa. Considero que mientras más buscadores hayan, de buena calidad, habrá más diversidad en las oportunidades de acceder a la información y al conocimiento.
Why does WolframAlpha know the 38th Mersenne Prime (http://is.gd/L34y) but not the 39th to the highest known 46th (http://is.gd/L36B)?
What was the development time for the creation of wolframalpha?
Few thins I have looked for however results have been relevant . Would like to see more engineering information .
What is the long term scope of this project?
Do you contemplate association with large publishers of technical and scientific information?
I really appreciate your effort to give the world a powerful tool for education, investigation and generally in culture. World is to wide and too old that I think it´ll take a long time before this site reaches completely its objectifs, but with the help of all users will be easier to do it. I hope all og us could give a little help to reach better reults.
I hope that the Wolfram Alpha is very good web site for the diferent people in the whole world.
Sincerily
ALVARO SEQUERA DUARTE
Legal information appears lacking. Useful would be number of lawsuits filed in California, or in federal court etc. since fee-based services now monopolize this data. Also jury awards, and in our dreams: statistical info on human rights treaty compliance by signatories of the major conventions, that sort of thing. I am legal info specialist (law degree) at Georgetown, Wash. DC.
I commented once that “to me it seems a perfect introduction of Chapter 13 of NKS”. Though W|A seems a perfect example of PCE, can you throw light on how or in what aspect the NKS presented in the the book has been applied to create W|A ? … or it is really the next chapter to be unveiled sometime later ?
How we can achieve Medical Related(Surgery,Disease) information through your search engine?
Thanks
I’ve separately given feedback on a number of different problems that I encountered with Stock & Finance queries and hopefully they are being addressed separately by your staff. It would be great for users if the Feedback was an ongoing, two-way street and not just a canned response, although the questions must number in the thousands. I have three new questions.
Last night I discovered that Mathematica has a table of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Why doesn’t W/A work with it or similar table or even work with the manually entered 30 stocks? (By the way, two of the Dow stocks will change as of Monday, 6/8/09 and Mathematica will need updating).
Why do 7 of the 30 companies have to be entered using their names rather than their symbols? AA, BA, GE, DD, HD, PG and T have to be entered with their names typed out. There should be no confusion with other symbols since I started my query— Finance BAC, CAT, JPM, AXP, etc, etc.
I entered the topic: Finance followed by all 30 stocks and W/A accepted them and started the normal computations, but then it Timed Out. Given accurate and properly formatted query data, Wolfram|Alpha should NOT be timing out after less than one minute of computation. I am sure that other users have longer and more complicated Math or other queries, than just 30 simple symbols. Will you be increasing the alloted computation time for W|A soon?
Looking forward to the next webcast later this afternoon. Thank you.
Bob D., Havertown, PA
La verdad, pienso que el lenguaje de las ciencias exactas es la matemática y eventualmente para personas con un nivel alto en estudios de ciencias e ingeniería el ingles no es un mito y es muy importante para el desarrollo actual en cualquier campo. Sin embargo, hay otras ciencias y áreas del conocimiento (como la filosofía), donde las traducciones pobres que ofrece el ingles no son suficientes. Así que eso justifica la importancia de no ser arrogantes y decir que el lenguaje de la ciencia es el ingles (me parece que ese comentario es de personas con un nivel de conocimiento muy superficial y sin ningún fundamento para hablar de ciencia. Tal vez saco su definición de ciencia de algún manual para dummies o Mario Unge en su defecto). Por otro lado, estamos encarando una tecnología que esta enfocada a todas las personas, sobre todo quienes no saben como buscar información de calidad en la red. Aquellos que estamos empapados de temas específicos, sabemos donde encontrar información de calidad, pero para la persona del común o que se esta educando es muy importante un buscador de calidad que este a su disposición y en su lenguaje natural. Nadie nació aprendido y es un camino que todos seguimos constantemente. Por favor no seamos ignorantes respecto al conocimiento y sus procesos. Si no sabemos decir cosas inteligentes, mejor no digamos nada. Una persona que medio sabe de computadores y algunas aplicaciones no es quien para hablar de ciencia, lenguaje y educación. Con comentarios como el del “lenguaje de la ciencia es el ingles”, solo demuestran su ignorancia y nos causan a todos los hispanohablantes vergüenza ajena
Are you trying to put all the unstructured data from the web into your engine so that we can ask questions like “who funded Twitter?” or “what type of servers does Wolfram Alpha run on?”.
Currently your website provides a natural way for a visitor to query through arrays of data rich results. Is live data, such as detailed weather by zip code or detailed info on plane flights, for instance, within the scope of advancements to come in the future? Or will you remain on the course of providing detailed archived information? If so, are interactive 3D models and graphs within this prospect?
-Clinton C.
Twitter: @pygeek
Will all of those interesting usage statistics that we saw during the opening be available for the public to look at. There are many people like myself whom are deeply intrigued by statistics such as that.
What about ethics? Are there any bankers out there.
A lot of people are having audio issues with the Justin.tv webcast. It is barely audible for many people using speakers. Can you turn up the volume or gain on your end?