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

By: Swiec

Swiec — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:04:15 +0000

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

By: WolframAlpha: a new way to search « Change Meme

WolframAlpha: a new way to search « Change Meme — Mon, 25 May 2009 07:07:34 +0000

[...] already getting some flack for being too “intelligent”, webomatica complained “I don’t like WolframAlpha because it makes me feel stupid” I suspect others will have the same sort of reaction and that this might become a [...]

By: Louise McGregor

Louise McGregor — Sun, 24 May 2009 15:10:10 +0000

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.

By: webomatica

webomatica — Fri, 22 May 2009 02:12:09 +0000

I guess I'm too stupid to understand the point of that video…

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:24:50 +0000

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.

By: Bertil

Bertil — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:53:48 +0000

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/05...

By: papa

papa — Thu, 21 May 2009 06:10:33 +0000

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!

(hey I know it's a new service and it will get better, but that initial experience still sucks no matter what the limits of the service's scope)

By: webomatica

webomatica — Thu, 21 May 2009 04:08:45 +0000

He's definitely right, in that it has the potential to be important. Right
now, it's unrealized.

By: webomatica

webomatica — Thu, 21 May 2009 04:08:44 +0000

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.

By: Hel

Hel — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:28:34 +0000

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.

By: Bertil

Bertil — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:08:22 +0000

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.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:40:15 +0000

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)