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Introducing WolframAlpha, the ?Computational Knowledge? Engine

By soulxtc

Actually calculates answers using “its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.”

WolframAlpha is the first step of what its creators says is the long term goal to “make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone.” The “computational knowledge engine” formulates solutions by doing computations “suing its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links” like search engines such as Google.

“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,” reads the site. “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.”

Named after Stephen Wolfram, the British-born computer scientist, physics prodigy (he earned a PhD at age 20), and lead inventor behind the project, is trying to extrapolate Mathematica, a computational software program used in scientific, engineering, mathematical fields, and other areas of technical computing, for use by a wider audience.

“Wolfram|Alpha, as it exists today, is just the beginning,” it promises. “We have both short- and long-term plans to dramatically expand all aspects of Wolfram|Alpha, broadening and deepening our data, our computation, our linguistics, our presentation, and more.”

Overall, the site’s pretty handy in a more encyclopedic fashion than is Google. Enter “caffeine,” for example, and you get back results that include: molecular weight, formula, 3D structure, permeability, and more.

Here’s a

Try WolframAlpha out for yourself and tell me what you think.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on May 18, 2009 (boomark / email).