I spent a few minutes today messing around with Wolfram|Alpha, the well-known computational/knowledge engine. It can tell you more about or calculate interesting things based on almost any input that corresponds to an objective fact (like "birth rate Miami" or "sin x = 2cos x", not "most beautiful painting"). It can do almost computation and has access to insane amounts of information.
From just some English-like text, it puts together a query, the visual structure of which it displays conveniently under the search box. Then, in a matter of seconds, it produces all kinds of information about your query, and of course the solution if it was mathematical.
The Random button produces, well, a random query, presumably that somebody somewhere entered recently. I've received all kinds of interesting things from it, from math to maps to DNS. I could probably spend hours just trying to learn things Wolfram can do.
No comments:
Post a Comment