Cookies help us display personalized product recommendations and ensure you have great shopping experience.

By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    data analytics and truck accident claims
    How Data Analytics Reduces Truck Accidents and Speeds Up Claims
    7 Min Read
    predictive analytics for interior designers
    Interior Designers Boost Profits with Predictive Analytics
    8 Min Read
    image fx (67)
    Improving LinkedIn Ad Strategies with Data Analytics
    9 Min Read
    big data and remote work
    Data Helps Speech-Language Pathologists Deliver Better Results
    6 Min Read
    data driven insights
    How Data-Driven Insights Are Addressing Gaps in Patient Communication and Equity
    8 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Wolfram Alpha: First-Hand Impressions
Share
Notification
Font ResizerAa
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Uncategorized > Wolfram Alpha: First-Hand Impressions
Uncategorized

Wolfram Alpha: First-Hand Impressions

Daniel Tunkelang
Daniel Tunkelang
6 Min Read
SHARE

You’d think that, after my less than flattering coverage of the Wolfram Alpha pre-launch hype, they would have blocked my IP address even after the public launch. I certainly thought so.

But I was wrong. Last week, someone from their business development group contacted me to arrange a preview of the system. He spent an hour with me today, discussing the system and showing me how it worked. I couldn’t type into the search box myself, but he did let me suggest queries and then entered them for me. He also encouraged me to speak freely about what I’d seen–they’re actually concerned that the hype and its propagation through the echo chamber are setting inappropriate expectations for the product, and eager for cooler heads to prevail or at least temper the exaggeration.

While I stand by my critique of the marketing, I am persuaded that Wolfram Alpha has built something interesting. It is unfortunate that it’s invited so much comparison to Powerset and is being hyped as a potential Google killer.

As Nova Spivack and others correctly pointed out, Wolfram Alpha isn’t really competing with Google, but rather with Wikipedia and Freebase. Wolfram Al…

More Read

The Change Leader of Tomorrow
Does the emergence of the tech mega-vendor driven economy mean the end of innovation?
Practical Change Management: The Top Ten Countdown – No. 10
Why change management needs design thinking
Little less Green

You’d think that, after my less than flattering coverage of the Wolfram Alpha pre-launch hype, they would have blocked my IP address even after the public launch. I certainly thought so.

But I was wrong. Last week, someone from their business development group contacted me to arrange a preview of the system. He spent an hour with me today, discussing the system and showing me how it worked. I couldn’t type into the search box myself, but he did let me suggest queries and then entered them for me. He also encouraged me to speak freely about what I’d seen–they’re actually concerned that the hype and its propagation through the echo chamber are setting inappropriate expectations for the product, and eager for cooler heads to prevail or at least temper the exaggeration.

While I stand by my critique of the marketing, I am persuaded that Wolfram Alpha has built something interesting. It is unfortunate that it’s invited so much comparison to Powerset and is being hyped as a potential Google killer.

As Nova Spivack and others correctly pointed out, Wolfram Alpha isn’t really competing with Google, but rather with Wikipedia and Freebase. Wolfram Alpha offers two major core competencies. The first is a vast amount of curated knowledge: they claim to have roughly 20 trillion “facts” as raw inputs, not the results of any kind of inference process. The second is the capability to relate those facts programmatically by exploiting their formal structure and to generate inferences from them.

Yes, Wolfram Alpha also has a natural language component, but that aspect of their offering is, by their own admission, its weakest point. Having a natural language interface is a necessary evil to provide a way for human beings to access this structured data. But unfortunately its the aspect that people have fixated on most–and will likely continue to do so.

In my view, a more productive way to think of Wolfram Alpha is as a highly structured content repository that offers an API in order to get at the content programatically. I saw example queries like (population of china) + (population of japan) / (population of USA). By itself, that’s a parlor trick that feels a bit like Google Calculator. But the ability to include expressions like is_a (china, country) and population (capital_city (china)) in an application (e.g., Excel) would create real value. Note: this is my fanciful syntax, not theirs.

In May, Wolfram Alpha plans to open up their web site to the public, which means that people will have access to the natural language interface to their content. While the launch will surely generate a lot of press, I suspect that most people will focus on the natural language interface, or on the inability to handle subjective information needs.

That’s a pity. The technology has challenges, but I think the questions people should be asking are if, when and how they will be able to integrate it with business applications. Wolfram Alpha may have value as a stand-alone alternative to Wikipedia for objective data, but its real potential is as a service to use in other applications.

Link to original post

Share This Article
Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

data analytics and truck accident claims
How Data Analytics Reduces Truck Accidents and Speeds Up Claims
Analytics Big Data Exclusive
predictive analytics for interior designers
Interior Designers Boost Profits with Predictive Analytics
Analytics Exclusive Predictive Analytics
big data and cybercrime
Stopping Lateral Movement in a Data-Heavy, Edge-First World
Big Data Exclusive
AI and data mining
What the Rise of AI Web Scrapers Means for Data Teams
Artificial Intelligence Big Data Exclusive

Stay Connected

1.2kFollowersLike
33.7kFollowersFollow
222FollowersPin

You Might also Like

Using Your SEO and Analytics to Create a Social Media Strategy

7 Min Read

Consider This: The Big Data Workout

12 Min Read

How do You Define Community?

5 Min Read

Python Programs for Non-Python People

5 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

ai in ecommerce
Artificial Intelligence for eCommerce: A Closer Look
Artificial Intelligence
ai chatbot
The Art of Conversation: Enhancing Chatbots with Advanced AI Prompts
Chatbots

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?