
What it is – How it works
SMART CONTRACTS
[By Staff Reporters]
Wolfram Alpha is an online mathematical search engine launched in March 2009 and developed by Stephen Wolfram. It seeks to answer factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of web pages that might contain the answer.
In this way, WA differs from traditional semantic search engines, which index a large number of answers and then try to match the question to one. Wolfram Alpha has many parallels with Cyc, a project aimed since the 1980s at developing a common-sense inference engine. Wolfram Alpha is built on Wolfram’s earlier flagship product, Mathematica, which encompasses computer algebra, symbolic and numerical computation, visualization, and statistics capabilities.
With Mathematica running in the background, WA is suited to answer mathematical questions. The answer usually presents a human-readable solution.
Link: http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Technology
Wolfram Alpha is written in about 5 million lines of Mathematica (using webMathematica and gridMathematica) code and runs on 10,000 CPUs. As well as being a web site, Wolfram Alpha provides an API (for a fee) that delivers computational answers to other applications. One such application is the Bing search engine.
Capabilities
As an example, one can input the name of a website, and it will return relevant information about the site, including its location, site rank, number of visitors and more. The database currently includes hundreds of datasets, including current and historical weather, drug data, star charts, currency conversion, and many others. The datasets have been accumulated over approximately two years, and are expected to continue to grow. The range of questions that can be answered is also expected to grow with the expansion of the datasets.
Audio: http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html
Utility and Usefulness
Wolfram Alpha is ideal for use by all readers and subscribers of the ME-P. It may be used by doctors, nurses, financial advisors and insurance agents, economists, mathematicians, editors, and publishers, teachers and students of all academic levels. The graphical nature of output is particularly helpful.
Assessment
Wolfram Alpha has received mixed reviews, to date. Advocates point to its potential, some even stating that how it determines output result is more important than current usefulness.
Note: Info courtesy wikipedia.org
PODCAST: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=stephen+wolfram&docid=608027542444182789&mid=7432EA16AEF1CDF4FCDD7432EA16AEF1CDF4FCDD&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
Conclusion
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Filed under: Accounting, Career Development, Health Economics, Healthcare Finance, Insurance Matters, Investing, Research & Development, Videos | Tagged: API, Bing, cyc, gridMathematica, Mathematica, smart contracts, statistics, stephen wolfram, webMathematica, Wolfram Alpha | 9 Comments »