Truly I’d describe it to you, but I could never do it justice.
It’s a wicked cool search engine, has to be seen to be believed.
Check this out:
Watch the Introduction first:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html
Then save the Site in your favorites:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
It’s not as smart as it thinks - I asked it who shot first, Han or Greedo? And it returned the population of Japan.
Amazing. Someone please ask it the 14 g of th (or what ever the hell that riddle was).
I’ve had this bookmarked for the last year or so. It’s fantastic for a lot of things, although it works best if you’re after something quite specific. I find Google is still better for more general stuff. Wolfram Alpha is part search engine, part calculating tool, part statistical database.
Heh. I asked it “What is the meaning of life?”
Answer: 42.
Q: Why?
A: Because.
Gotta give this a bump, try this:
How many roads must a man walk down?
Apparently William Kotzwinkle wrote the book of love.
Good to know.
I finally stumped it with the perennial nugget: Does a dog have Buddha nature?
Q: Are we there yet?
A: Not yet, but getting close.
(I still like Elaine Boozler’s answer better: Yes, get out of the car.)
Along these lines, I heard on “Stuff you should know” podcast that they use Galileo for information.
What is that?
I asked it why they changed Darrins and got a statistical distribution of the ages of people named Darrin.
I asked “What are the 3 words ending in ‘gry’?” and got nothing useful.
Q: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
A: A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
I asked the classic question from the opening line of Oak’s Anthem (well, ok, you mortals still insist on calling it Free Bird), ie “If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?”. Got back mostly a list of apparently famous people that died on Billy Joe McAllister Day in the past. Did not even get a mention of poor Billy Joe, much less the immortal Rock Gods, Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Color me…unimpressed.
Apparently “lozenge” rhymes with “Orange”.
Huh.
What is the average price of all grades of gasoline per gallon in London?
A. Data not available.
I’m verily underwhelmed.
ETA:
Ok, that made me chuckle.
can a swallow carry a coconut?
Great site, albeit limited. I do a lot of soft fact checking in my editorial work. Most contracts don’t call for any, but if something sticks out or I want to verification of a statement, it sometimes works very quickly. I’ve had it bookmarked for a long time now, back before it was publicly available (never got far with beta testing though). It has definitely improved and far from its ultimate ambition. Good to have though.
By that logic, so would Stonehenge…
Yea, I occasionally use it for to try and get graphs of economic information. Supposedly it has a huge database of such information to draw on, but I have had pretty limited success even with that pretty basic stuff.
So meh.