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I Don’t Like Wolfram Alpha Because It Makes Me Feel Stupid

May 19th, 2009

That headline is pretty much the crux of it. There’s a new “search engine” (in quotes because they don’t want to be compared with Google, but inevitably will because a big text box that you type in indicates “search engine” to everyone on the Internet) that claims to be a “computational knowledge engine.” I don’t even know what that sentence is supposed to mean.

So when checking it out, I typed some queries in there (california special election, academy award winners 2008, how much does Barack Obama weigh) I was curious about, and it gave me the answer “Wolfram Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.” Okay.

But it is useful in certain specific instances. You can ask if a certain number is prime. You can look up the book title “The Grapes of Wrath” and find out when it was published and that it won a Pulitzer. You can solve a Diophantine equation. You can compute mechanical work.

Well, that’s cool. But I have literally, no use for any of this information. The last time I needed to know a prime number was in highschool, and I wouldn’t know what a Diophantine equation was if it bit me in the Grapes of Wrath. I’m not going to nod my head saying, “I see how this can be really useful” and even pretend to understand it, because I simply don’t. I mean: resistivity: 1.69 x 10-5 ohm cm … what the heck is resistivity? I can’t remember what a -5 exponent is or an ohm.

There’s no question this knowledge is useful to someone, but for me it just flies right over my head, both in usefulness and results. I feel like I’d have to go back to college just to learn some what to ask it and then understand the responses. But that isn’t going to happen, and so it’s pretty obvious Wolfram Alpha is confined to being a niche service.

Yet part of Wolfram Alpha’s goals are to not be a niche service:

“Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels.”

They really need to work on that last part. I’m really reluctant to use a service that makes me feel like a moron, both for my inability to understand its answers and for making me feel like any legitimate questions I have are too simplistic for it to waste time on.

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  • Daniel
    The current problem with it is that its main database is from Mathematica, which obviously is very specialized. However, Mr. Wolfram has said that his team will be working hard to provide answers where they currently have nothing.

    The "computational knowledge engine" thing means that it's basically a calculator with a database (information already in its memory). The limitation of that is that it can only tell you stuff about whatever's already in its database rather than about all the information on the web.

    Again, from our friend Mr. Wolfram, "I am not keen on the hype," he said. "[Although] I think Wolfram Alpha has the potential to be quite important." (as quoted on Newsy.com, attributed to The Telegraph)
  • He's definitely right, in that it has the potential to be important. Right
    now, it's unrealized.
  • Bertil
    Wolfram has been trying to extend Mathematica's market (calculus) into other structured data. Ask him about want you really need, ie. Stock tickers and color theories, awards for TV series. . . and you'll have far more interesting results. What you describe is akin to saying: Wikipedia has pages on Tatooine Social structure, therefore there is nothing of interest to me.
  • Except in addition to Tatooine social structure, Wikipedia has a lot of
    other stuff I am interested in, plus a lot of stuff others would be as well.
  • Agreed. I also think that part of the problem is that if you are gonna give me a blank field and tell me to plugin something, you really ought to give me answers most of the time. If the product/db is constrained, there should be a clearer explanation as to _what it is I should do_

    Wolfram Alpha is like a dude standing in front of you saying "go ahead, ask me something, do it, do it..."

    I ask a question and Wolfram says..."Oh, but not that question. Try something else!"

    That leaves me with the taste of disappointment. I, the end user, shouldn't have to work so hard to tease out a valid response.

    (hey I know it's a new service and it will get better, but that initial user-experience is still uneven as of today)
  • Hel
    I'm afraid I don't see the point of Wolfram Alpha either & I suspect that's because I really have no interest in maths. About all I've successfully got it to tell me was things like populations of cities, the weather & time in those cities and stuff like that that I can already find quite easily if I'm so inclined.

    It might have potential, but at this point it seems like its only use will really be amongst the scientific types using at as something of a glorified calculator. Perhaps it'll need a Steve Jobs type to dig deep and find a way to make it useful to more people and take it into the mainstream. If they even want to make it more mainstream, they may be happy just keeping it amongst the maths geeks & experimenting on it to their hearts content.
  • Bertil
  • I guess I'm too stupid to understand the point of that video...
  • I think it would come in handy in time. For now, I must agree with you that it doesn't serves any purpose in general.
  • I like it, but I suspect it's going to remain "for experts" rather than "bringing expert-level knowledge to everyone" simply because few people need to know the structure of phenol.
  • Wolfram Alpha is awesome if you're studying for college. Just put in a function and it will do anything possible with it, then you simply see whether the bits you did are correct. Awesome stuff!

    The thing that makes it better to use than Mathematica is that with mathematica you have to actually _know_ what it is you want. Wolfram Alpha will TELL you what you want. And that makes it infinitely more useful imho
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