Wolfram|Alpha is live online!

Wolfram|Alpha was online and computing at 12 am EST on May 18, 2009.

What can it do?

It can do practically any math computation you want, but shows a checkered set of data in other areas. It knew how many teaspoons fit in a quart, but not how many jelly beans fit. As a matter of fact, it didn't know what a jelly bean was. It offered me my choice of jelly or dried beans. It did give me calories for a quart of beans, along with fiber, sodium and protein, among other nutritional information. What it showed looked like the nutrition label from the grocery store. It didn't know how many beans were in that quart. I got calories for a portion of asparagus - which is 3 ounces- but not how many pieces in a portion.

It knew the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza, but not the length of its sides, so it couldn't figure out the volume.

It knew who I meant when I asked it when Bloody Mary died- giving me the date for Mary I of England. However, it did not know how many wives Henry the VIII had. It knew about half the death dates for his wives- but not all of them.

It gave me an exact date of death for Jesus- and the phase of the moon on that date at my location on the globe. It had the date of death for Shakespeare, but not Christopher Marley. And when I asked it when Romeo and Juliet was written, it asked whether I wanted the book or the movie.

It showed me a sky map from my location when I asked where Ceres was, and highlighted its position against the constellations. When asked for the height of the International Space station, it showed me the orbit around the earth, and told me it was not currently visible from my location.

I asked it about a diagnosis for pain in the lower abdomen, and it did not understand my input. (I got that answer a number of times.) It told me appendix was in future information.

On several of the queries it could not answer, it asked me if I was an expert on the subject. It sounds like they may be recruiting curators.

It did have calorie information for six marshmallows. And it gave me calorie information for a banana and a six ounce glass of milk (although I don't know if it used skim milk or whole milk or 2 percent. )

It knows the height of the Statue of Liberty, and the distance in a straight line form Schenectady to Los Angeles, as well as air travel time, the length of time it would take a sound to get there, light in a fiber, and light in a vacuum.

It is late, and I can't think of everything I wanted to ask it, but it seems like a fun toy right now.

It didn't know how much 50 pounds would weigh in .64 gravity, and it didn't know how much 50 pounds would weigh on the moon. Of course, maybe I don't know the right way to parse my questions yet.

Go out there and quiz it. Let it know if you are an expert in something it doesn't know about. Send it a comment if you found its answers strange. I think that its future is going to depend on what we make of it, and what we let it know we want to know. Right now, it is an idiot savant, but it can learn.

(11,793 pts )