Computational search – Wolfram Alpha
WolfRam Alpha – a computaional knowledge engine
Launching May 29, 2009, tonight (5/15/09) a live webcast is being presented on this new search tool. Ready for the new direction that Stephen Wolfram is taking?
Based on Mathematica technologies this new engine may be a tool of choice for anyone familiar with Mathematica.
Wolfram writes, “When we launch Wolfram|Alpha this weekend [5/15/09], it will be running Mathematica on about 10,000 processor cores, using gridMathematica-based parallelism. And every single query that comes into the system will be served with webMathematica. If you watch the live webcast tonight, you’ll see lots of real-time system analysis, logging, and visualization—all written in Mathematica.” Sounds promising.
Some key descriptors from Stephen Wolfram on Wolfram Alpha:
- curated data
- ability to do computations
- utilizing methods and models of science where quantitative approaches can be used
- a web of algorithmic capabilities
- state of the art computational results
- WolframAlpha understands free-form linguistic input (utilizing symbolic pattern-matching)
- automated presentation of results (structurally organized and presented results; also typeset? hmmm)
- a Mathematica Notebook download link on each result page (load the results into Mathematica on your local system – a new twist for sure.)
So what’s the difference from traditional search engines like Goole, Yahoo and others? Watch the video on the site to get an idea and then try this new engine out. If you search via Google, MSN, Yahoo or some other engine the results reflect ‘best matches’ to your search terms. With WolfRam Alpha the search results will be computational, relational, formulaic or other results connected to your search query – again, check out the screencast which provides a nice demonstration of this new tool.
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