[dba-Tech] OT: Wolfram|Alpha

John Bartow john at winhaven.net
Mon May 18 08:33:23 CDT 2009


It is very powerful but one must also state the question very specifically
or it returns "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."

"How many ounces in a shot glass" needs clarification - "How many ounces in
a shot" returns the answer "1 oz."

It does seem to learn though. "How many ounces in a shot glass" now returns
a link: "did you mean _How many ounces in a shot_"

Their "Tips for good results >" link is helpful but is broke in IE7, can't
close it nor copy and paste from it.

Moses date of birth returns an answer, I'm just guessing it's in the Hebrew
calendar date...

-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 12:52 PM
To: dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [dba-Tech] OT: Wolfram|Alpha

Hi Steve (switched channel)

Yes, it is slow. 
However, the knowledge of this incredible machine has limits, though hard to
believe. 
I'm a bit proud I found one item it doesn't know of: Cartesian (product or
join). That is somewhat weird, as this is well-known in mathematics:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_product 

In SQL, this returns every possible combination of records from two or more
tables:

Select
  TableA.*,
  TableB.*
From
  TableA,
  TableB

/gustav


>>> erbachs at gmail.com 16-05-2009 19:30 >>>
Gustav,

I hear you about the heavy load.  In the past few hours I'd say that
25% of my queries get the "Sorry Dave!" warning about over capacity.

Steve Erbach

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 3:44 AM, Gustav Brock <Gustav at cactus.dk> wrote:
> Hi Steve
>
> Thanks!
> This could be extremely useful at a high level - though currently the site
seams to be under heavy load ...
>
> /gustav
>
>>>> erbachs at gmail.com 16-05-2009 06:44 >>>
> 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.


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