Thursday 28 May 2009

Random, Belated Geekery

Meant to do this last week, but Wolfram Alpha's gone online! Yay!

Go try it out, it's hugely enjoyable, although a bit limited at the moment.

Great on places:

Not so fantastic on world-spanning megastars just yet:

Still, it'll learn, eh? Cue Skynet gags...

7 comments:

ibs said...

This is the thing developed by that boy genius maths professor, huh? The dude who got a PhD when he was like 12 or something? I can only get it to spit out basic data on things like the elevation of places like Bristol and the genus of people like anteaters. I think given Prof. Wolfram's special genius we may have to skip the abstract stuff and limit input to questions that Rainman could answer.

ibs said...

Wait I just asked it "where do sharks come from?" And you know what it did? It spat out that *nutritional information* for a shark. Like on the side of a can. 125 calories. WTF?!?!?!

Christie Malry said...

and it provides 1% of your daily folic acid allowance!

It may need some work but it has provided me with a useful expression for when randoms spam my morally questionable articles about O Lucky Man... 'Christie Malry isn't sure what to do with your input' - should work.

On such trifles are interwebal memes built. You mark my words.

Anonymous said...

God makes sharks out of clay, breathes life into them and puts them in the ocean when you're not looking (at night, under heavy cloud cover, and when he's distracted you by getting some guy to set off a bomb somewhere.)

I knew this without even needing to ask a website. However, I would like to know the nutritional information for a shark, and whether they taste nice.

hpwatch

Christie Malry said...

hpwatch, you badly need wolfram alpha in your life...

Anonymous said...

I asked it

"sharks are tastey?"

It did not know what to do with my input. Suspecting I had spelt a word wrong, I asked it

"sharks are tasty?"

Still fuck all. So I called my mum and she told me they are, and my gran once ate one at the House of Commons.

It needs work.

Christie Malry said...

Yeah, but see the potential? Ask it 'what is 4/3(pi*r^3)' or 'what is Newton's 2nd law of motion?' and it's bang on. It even knows what the Principia Mathematica is (Newton's anyway. Russell's, no.)