komplexify!

Speaking of Skynet, Stephen Wolfram’s version of it, Wolfram|Alpha went online three weeks ago.  According to its own hype,

Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

So… Skynet.  But in convenient, internet-ready form.

Saying hello to Wolfram|Alpha does little to dissuade this notion.

That’s just a little creepy, as is this:

It knows where I live!  Let’s try to trick it!

Well played, Wolfram|Alpha.  Well played.  Then let’s ask it straight up:

Aha!  That’s exactly what you’d say if you were Skynet!  Busted!

In actuality, Wolfram|Alpha is not Skynet.  Well, not yet, anyway.  It’s really just Stephen Wolfram’s attempt to steal some business from those other sources of online information brokering, Google and Wikipedia.  So how does it stand up to them?  Well, let’s compare.

If you ask about “pi”

• Google gives you links to a couple of sites about the number pi, the Movie Pi, the record label Pi Recordings, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
• Wikipedia gives a lengthy encyclopedia entry about the number π, its history, and its use in mathematics, physics, and popular culture.
• Wolfram|Alpha gives only the number π, but you get it approximated to 65 decimal places, written as a continued fraction, and expressed via trigonometric, exponential, logarithmic functions, three different infinite sums, and three different definite integrals, with the option for more.

Similarly, if you ask about, say, “Stephen Cobert”

• Google gives links to his website, twitter account, IMDB page, Wikipedia entry, and various news stories.
• Wikipedia gives facts about his life, such as being the supreme overlord of the universe and being single-handedly responsible for Africa’s current bout of surging elephant populations.
• Wolfram|Alpha gives his name, rank, and serial number.

Or, more interestingly, if you type in “banana slug”

• Google gives you links to several sites dealing with the long, bright yellow gastropod with the same name (and UC Santa Cruz, for whom it is the mascot).
• Wikipedia gives an encyclopedia entry on them.
• Wolfram|Alpha gives you the nutritional content in 32 pounds of bananas:

So, to summarize, Wolfram|Alpha is like Google crippled with Asperger’s, or Wikipedia crippled with academic intrigrity.

W|A is very good at computational stuff.  Two weeks ago I mentioned Egyptian unit fractions, and (on my own) quite painfully computed a unit fraction decomposition of π that was accurate to ten decimal places; but with W|A it’s as easy as

Similarly, the Queen B needed to convert dollars into euros whilst talking to her mother on the phone.  If you just type in, say, “$1200″ into Google, you find lots of sites about living on or spending twelve hundred dollars.  Alternatively, if you type in “$1200″ into W|A, you find that its worth 862.46 euros (and 747.52 British pounds and 8184 Chinese yuan ad 16100 Mexican pesos), with a link to compare the exchange history of the dollar versus the euro over the past financial quarter.

However, if you pay attention to all of the weird numerical data W|A gives you, you’ll often find a sense of humor hidden under the symbols.  For example, if you type in, say, “176 m.p.h.,” you’ll find the following:

Didja catch it?  In addition to 176 m.p.h. being almost 3 miles per minute, or almost a third the speed of sound, or just a smidgen faster than your average TGV train, it is also exactly twice the speed at which Marty McFly needed to drive the Delorean DMC-12 in order to time travel.  Apparently W|A likes to watch movies.

(For more fun, try seeing what it knows about “24 m.p.h.“  Go on… I’ll wait.)

I was a little miffed when I typed in “42″ and only got a handful of alternate notations and a couple of factoids, but W|A redeemed itself when I went round the question (or rather, the Answer) a different way:

What other universal truths does W|A know?

Basic philosophy is crippled by W|A’s prowess with cold, hard scientific fact.  How about this classic?

Deep.  How about this one?

Well, that was a bit unexpected.  Apparently God is hanging out in Hungary, although I think referring to Him as a “Pest” is a little condescending.

After all, you’re not Skynet yet, buddy.