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ARCHIVE: October 2013
October 31, 2013– 1

I was a raging sugar-holic as a kid. (Let’s face it, who wasn’t?) So, naturally, Halloween was a glorious, much-anticipated, high-energy free-for-all. My brother and I used to return from trick-or-treating dragging heavy pumpkin buckets and overstuffed pillowcases behind us—the candy wrappers would make that crinkle-squish sound as we dumped out our riches to sort, trade, construct giant candy pyramids… and then devour. More »

October 29, 2013– 2

We’re excited to introduce some brand new features to our step-by-step functionality! Wolfram|Alpha can now guide you through factoring polynomials and completing the square, in addition to being updated to include FOIL and the binomial expansion theorem. Let’s take a look. More »

October 28, 2013– Comments Off on Speak Softly and Carry a Big Dataset Comments Off on Speak Softly and Carry a Big Dataset

Theodore Roosevelt was born 155 years ago yesterday. Roosevelt led an exciting life—he commanded the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, gave a 90-minute speech after being shot, and, oh yes, served as president from 1901 to 1909. As you might expect, Wolfram|Alpha contains quite a lot of data on the life of this impressive figure. More »

October 24, 2013– Comments Off on Arm Yourselves with Wolfram Knowledge Comments Off on Arm Yourselves with Wolfram Knowledge

By now, most of you students are likely getting into the thick of the academic year, preparing for the first wave of exams and projects and presentations to come your way… But don’t freak out just yet! Here’s a list of Wolfram’s most recent apps and programs that might help make your life a little easier. After all, it never hurts to have a few powerful resources on your side. More »

October 21, 2013– 6

Getting answers just got a whole lot easier for the BlackBerry set. As mentioned at the recent Wolfram Technology Conference, we’re happy and excited to share that BlackBerry has selected Wolfram|Alpha to provide answers for its Voice Control feature with the 10.2 release of BlackBerry OS. More »

October 18, 2013– 10

We are proud to announce Wolfram Problem Generator, a website where students decide which topic they want to practice and we provide the questions and solutions. This is an exciting new way to help students with their classes: previously, students provided their own practice questions and Wolfram|Alpha helped them find answers with Step-by-step solutions. Students can now ask Wolfram|Alpha for help with practice and homework questions and can do practice problems with Wolfram Problem Generator. More »

October 11, 2013– 7

Did you know that October 11 is World Egg Day?

Like most people, you probably go to the grocery store and eventually end up in the dairy aisle, where, unless you’re a vegetarian or vegan, you probably pick out a dozen eggs and place them into your cart without a second thought. They’re pretty much a staple food—from savory breakfasts to the sweet wonders of baking. More »

October 10, 2013– 20

Psst! Wolfram|Alpha has updated its Pokémon data to include Generation VI. Check it out here.

It’s not all abstract algebra and organic chemistry here at Wolfram HQ. From time to time, we like to take a piece of pop culture and put our own spin on the subject. We’ve seen from our server logs that our Pokémon plane curves are pretty popular. Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, the latest installments in the long-running video game series, will be released on October 12. Given those two facts, we thought it was a good time to add data about Pokémon to Wolfram|Alpha. More »

October 7, 2013– 9

Bonding is pretty fundamental, as it determines the shape of a molecule, which in turn determines how a molecule behaves. Wolfram|Alpha now supports Lewis structures—diagrams that show both the bonded and unbonded electrons in a molecule. But as any good teacher will tell you, even more important than finding the answer is the procedure used to get that answer. Thus, Wolfram|Alpha is expanding its Step-by-step interface into the realm of chemical bonding (with even more Step-by-step functionality coming soon). More »