[AccessD] OT: Wolfram|Alpha

Steve Erbach erbachs at gmail.com
Fri May 15 23:44:18 CDT 2009


Dear Group,

I watched the live launch webcast of Wolfram|Alpha tonight from about
7:30-10:30 CDT.  It is online now, though the official launch date is
Monday:

www.wolframalpha.com

One of the first queries I typed in was: "circumference of the milky
way in cm".  Wolfram|Alpha gave me the answer, whereas a Google search
just gave me a list of Milky Way web sites.

That's the biggest difference: Google gives you places to look for the
answer to your question while Wolfram|Alpha gives you the answer plus
a lot of interesting associated information.  For example, not only
did I get the circumference of the Milky Way in centimeters, I got the
time it would take light to travel that distance.

Very, very cool.  I've been typing in queries for about three hours.
There are things it doesn't quite get; but you can get started by
looking at the categorized examples.

I found that Wolfram|Alpha will not only solve quadratic equations but
it will factor them, too.  Algebra was the topic on another email
discussion and, voilà!  Wolfram|Alpha, she factors ze equations!

Amazing stuff.

Regards,

Steve Erbach
Neenah, WI
http://www.NeenahPolitics.com
http://www.TheTownCrank.com




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