Updated Wolfram Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine
Wolfram Alpha, the search engine developed by British-born physicist and Mathematica creator Stephen Wolfram, the one that went live less than a month ago, has been updated. In all fairness to Stephen Wolfram, we should refrain from calling Wolfram Alpha a search engine, and we should call it a computational knowledge engine. In a similar fashion we should refrain from calling Microsoft’s Bing a search engine also and should call it a “decision engine”. No matter how you call it, the bottom line is that Wolfram Alpha has been updated.
The Wolfram Alpha Team explains: “There’s new data flowing into Wolfram|Alpha every second. And we’re always working very hard to develop the core code and data for the system. In fact, internally, we have a complete new version of the system that’s built every day. But before we release this version for general use, we do extensive validation and testing. In addition to real-time data updates, we’ve made a few changes to Wolfram|Alpha since its launch three weeks ago. But today, as one step in our ongoing, long-term development process, we’ve just made live the first broad updates to the core code and data of Wolfram|Alpha.”
The complete list of updates added to the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine is available here. Out of that long, long list we’ve picked the following highlights:
- Added more linguistic forms to data and questions.
- Added more comparisons of composite properties, like for example “Us army vs. UK”.
- Better handling of government positions.
- Updated country borders and the naming of certain politically sensitive locations.
- Added subcountry regions.
- Enhanced support for fractional time zones, for example “India time”. For US states with multiple time zones, added city-by-city handling.
- European currencies have been updated.
- Added and continuing to add historical events.
- Implicit handling of geometric figure properties.
- Enhanced support for planet-to-planet distances.
- Better linguistic support for foods.
- Wolfram Alpha can answer more self aware questions such as “how old are you?”.
If you would like to use Wolfram Alpha, visit the official web page here.
The Wolfram Alpha Team explains: “There’s new data flowing into Wolfram|Alpha every second. And we’re always working very hard to develop the core code and data for the system. In fact, internally, we have a complete new version of the system that’s built every day. But before we release this version for general use, we do extensive validation and testing. In addition to real-time data updates, we’ve made a few changes to Wolfram|Alpha since its launch three weeks ago. But today, as one step in our ongoing, long-term development process, we’ve just made live the first broad updates to the core code and data of Wolfram|Alpha.”
The complete list of updates added to the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine is available here. Out of that long, long list we’ve picked the following highlights:
- Added more linguistic forms to data and questions.
- Added more comparisons of composite properties, like for example “Us army vs. UK”.
- Better handling of government positions.
- Updated country borders and the naming of certain politically sensitive locations.
- Added subcountry regions.
- Enhanced support for fractional time zones, for example “India time”. For US states with multiple time zones, added city-by-city handling.
- European currencies have been updated.
- Added and continuing to add historical events.
- Implicit handling of geometric figure properties.
- Enhanced support for planet-to-planet distances.
- Better linguistic support for foods.
- Wolfram Alpha can answer more self aware questions such as “how old are you?”.
If you would like to use Wolfram Alpha, visit the official web page here.
