Wolfram Alpha. So what’s the deal with this?

Posted by admin in Uncategorized Oct 19th, 2009 | no responses

Sometime in recent history Wolfram launched “Wolfram Alpha”, which I first thought was a search-like thing, because back when it first launched it had one search bar like Google’s. I went there in anticipation when it first launched. Mathematica, Wolfram’s flagship product, also what Wolfram Alpha is based on, is an expensive commodity for someone like me who uses Matlab. I have never used Mathematica but it’s hefty price tag had left a superior impression on me. So naturally I was excited to check out Wolfram Alpha. I wen there, typed some words, did not get any answers, left there and did not visit ever again. Until today morning.

I was checking the RSS feeds and there was a buzz about it today morning (Japan time) in tech news circles. Wolfram Alpha has released a iPhone app. But that was not the buzz about, it was about how the app was priced ridiculously cheap at $49.99! With all the negative and pessimistic comments about this I could think of only two possible reasons. One makes sense and the other doesn’t. The one with the sense is that the naturally intelligent people at Wolfram have somehow got this pricing plan calculated all wrong (don’t they have a copy of Mathematica?). The one that doesn’t make sense is that Wolfram pulled off a Colorado balloon-boy stunt to jump start their relatively forgotten application. At times when an app like iFart makes all the news buzz coherently, releasing an app for $49.99 is surely going to get attention. I know I said it doesn’t make much sense. So lets not talk about it anymore.

The problem with the pricing plan is, Wolfram Alpha is not for everyone. It’s not a like iFart. There is only a certain percentage of people who will actually use Wolfram Alpha. And from that amount of people there is only a certain fraction of people who can and will spend $49.99 for an app. So how many people would that be? I don’t have Mathematica so I can’t do that math. Maybe you can try it on Wolfram Alpha.

Anyway what got me interested really is to see why Wolfram Alpha is worth so much. What is so great about this? So I acted upon my instant instinct and went to http://www.wolframalpha.com/ to see what’s really happening over there. The interface is greatly enhanced from last (and first) I went there. From the little time I spent there, this much is clear. It is not somewhere you can search for something. Ofcourse they have a field “search web” when they can’t find anything for you. Wolfram Alpha has a pre-configured set of contents and algorithms. For example, if you put “1,2,3,4,5,…” it will plot it for you and give you some formulas for it and other things like it’s mean and median. Not very interesting so far. So I looked at some exmaples they have.

First I found this. The growth rate of males.

Which was pretty interesting. So I searched “growth chart asians”. Why? because I am asian and I wanted to see how much taller I can grow in to. Unfortunately it didn’t return any results. Next up, screws. Because there’s not a single day that passes without I search for about screws.

As you can see, it returns pretty awesome results. Well nothing more than a little Googling and http://www.engineersedge.com/screw_threads_chart.htm will give you, but this has a nice figure of a screw and some other pretty looking stuff. So screw Google.

To finish off, get a load of this.

Pretty complicated right? Well thats the kind of stuff I work with day in and day out. Just kidding. I have no idea what all those numbers are and I don’t wanna know either. So not that useful for me so far.

So anyway, Wolfram Alpha is pretty amazing. I mean really amazing. Will I use it? Is it useful for me?  No. It has a humongous amount of data and they let you manipulate those data in a “pre-configured” way. They have amassed lot of data and arranged it in such a way you can see them beautifully, with the help of more than 10,000 Mathemticas running behind the screen. There are lots and lots that I did not see so maybe my view is not completely accurate but it’s hard to figure out any one person wanting to use this more than couple of times.

This brings us to thing which started all the buzz today. The iPhone app. How useful is an iPhone app? and is it worth the $49.99? Firstly, the iPhone app offers the same contents as that of what you get over the browser. So why not use it free over the internet? Because iPhone still has no Flash support. I am not sure if it is Flash that Wolfram Alpha is using, but if iPhone, that is Safari, cannot do Flash, there is no way it can do this. Or so I think because else there is no reason to pay for an app. So that is probably why you need a standalone app. And ofcourse for Wolfram to earn some bucks.

OK, is it worth $49.99? Maybe. But only if Wolfram Alpha is worth to you. Then, is an iPhone app useful? Doubtful. With the contents and types of functionality of Wolfram Alpha, I fail to see how useful an iPhone app will be. I mean how often do you want to know the “ribbon structure of Myoglobin” or see a “30-sided polyhedron” or plot a “polynomial of order-24″ while you are on the way to the movies? The fact about Wolfram is, it has an enormous amount of data, but only a small fraction of that is useful for any given person. And for the average person it has no use at all. Ofcourse Mamathetica is not for the average person but still, the usefulness of Wolfram Alpha is very isolated. For any one person, the usefulness of all that data is very limited.

Will I buy the Wolfram Alpha iPhone app? No. Because I don’t have an iPhone. Even if I did I will not buy if for $49.99. Not even for $9.99. $1.99? Maybe. Because it does have pretty interesting functionality. I might use it for plotting a polynomial, but I will not use it to see the atomic structure of a chemical or the solar path or something. So I played around a bit in Wolfram Alpha today. But I don’t see myself going there again for a while. I think Wolfram might need to feed in some numbers to the Alpha and use few of those thousands of algorithms available and come with a sensible price.

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