Tim,

Could you enlighten me on the coolness of Wolfram Alpha? My initial forays
and comparison to Google were depressingly unfavorable, but excellent if
you're looking for some humor. See the summary below.

Best wishes,

--greg

My standard test of a search engine: polyadic pi-calculus
Google result: first hit is the Edinburgh tutorial prepared by Milner, still
the best reference
Wolfram Alpha: "*Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.
Related inputs to try: pi.*"

This test, by the way, should be right in W|A's sweet spot.

My next test: phred weasley
Google result: Did you mean: *fred*
weasley<http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=ePU&ei=T0gxSvHvF8nRjAfzn5S2Bw&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=fred+weasley&spell=1>and
then several links to Harry Potter
W|A result: "*Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. Related
inputs to try: Wesley.*"

My next test: fred weasley
Google result: the top Harry Potter sites
W|A result:

Interpreting "weasley" as "wesley"
------------------------------
------------------------------
Assuming Fred (female) | Use Fred
(male)<javascript:applyAssumption(1,'*DPClash.GivenNameE.fred-_*FredUnitedStatesMaleName-')>instead
------------------------------
------------------------------
------------------------------
Input interpretation:[image: Fred (female given name) | Wesley (male given
name)]
------------------------------
------------------------------
Latest information for US births:[image: | Fred | Wesley\nrank | 985th
(1929) | 194th (2008)\nfraction | 1 in 21277 people (0.0047%) (1929) | 1 in
1058 people (0.094%) (2008)\nnumber | 54 people per year (1929) | 2033
people per year (2008)]
------------------------------
------------------------------
History for US births:Log
scale<javascript:asynchronousPod('pod.jsp?id=MSP41119646i0hb5a62fg000004fe211d660aid2aa&s=61',%20'0300','fred+weasley','',0)>
More<javascript:asynchronousPod('pod.jsp?id=MSP41219646i0hb5a62fg0000058i0506e54df6b4e&s=61',%20'0300','fred+weasley','',0)>
Fraction:[image: Fraction]

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Timothy Perrett
<[email protected]>wrote:

>
> Hey Ty,
>
> Essentially the wolfram API is a REST / XMLRPC hybrid, so my plan is
> to model a scala abstraction around Apache HTTP (similar to the paypal
> integration) - speaking of which, i might actually abstract some of
> the common factories out of lift-paypal into lift-util if applicable.
>
> The interesting challenge will be that with wolfram, it can return a
> whole bunch of things, they could be graphs, text, sound - so i'll
> need some abstract way of making that presentable - perhaps some
> decoupled thing with a core communication group, then some lift
> specific abstractions for hooking into bind() or something...
>
> I've not figured it out yet in my head, so any thoughts are most
> welcome.
>
> Cheers, Tim
>
> On Jun 11, 6:16 pm, TylerWeir <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Sounds cool, I agree that there is much awesome in Alpha.
> >
> > How do you see this integration planning out?
> >
> > On Jun 11, 12:02 pm, Timothy Perrett <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > Hey chaps,
> >
> > > Im going to start work on integration with the wolfram alpha engine
> > > that i've of late become most obsessed with as its the coolest thing
> > > since sliced bread...http://www.wolframalpha.com/
> >
> > > New branch here:
> http://github.com/dpp/liftweb/tree/wip-tim-wolframalpha
> >
> > > Anyone else in the commit team interested in working on this with me?
> >
> > > Cheers, Tim
> >
>


-- 
L.G. Meredith
Managing Partner
Biosimilarity LLC
1219 NW 83rd St
Seattle, WA 98117

+1 206.650.3740

http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com

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