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Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

340 points| zandorg | 4 years ago

I did a search on comments on HN for Wolfram Alpha. Most posts are 8 years old, none newer, some older.

What's going on? Did Wolfram Alpha stop being useful, or did people just forget about it?

264 comments

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[+] onedognight|4 years ago|reply
I use it regularly. Sometimes it’s broken, and maybe nobody notices but me? :)

Their natural language queries for things that I know they know about are amazing. Here are some that I have used recently. You really need to see these results to appreciate them.

I wanted to know how tall my daughter might be.

   8 year old female 55 lbs
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=8%20year%20old%20female...

I wanted to know the nutrition content of an egg sandwich.

   1 egg, two slices whole wheat bread, one slice of cheddar, two pieces of bacon
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%20egg%2C%20two%20slic...

I was curious about the relative usage of two names over time.

   Michael, Henry
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Michael%2C%20Henry
[+] mike_d|4 years ago|reply
Also a frequent WA user. I use it for things I could calculate, but are much faster to just ask in plain text.

How much that cloud instance really costs

  $0.03/hr * 1 month
Bandwidth calculations for hosting providers

  10 TB per month in Mbps
[+] skinkestek|4 years ago|reply
The sandwich example was brilliant! I never expected that to be possible (the example of packing smaller circles in a larger one in another comment is also brilliant but less useful for me today I think.)
[+] thro1|4 years ago|reply
Just asked a friend about this:

> 1 egg, two slices whole wheat bread, one slice of cheddar, two.. leaves of lettuce ..

and he said it's wrong and useless (!) - giving me examples and numbers as:

protein assimilability from bread is 40% etc.

Is there a way to get correct answers from Wolfram regarding this ?

(assimilability of doesn't work)

Edit: Excuse me, what's wrong with you downvoters - it's a legit question. Or is there something wrong with assimilability? Are you happy being off with your answers by 60% - or jealous that a human can have better answers?

[+] ISL|4 years ago|reply
Yeah; I use it for the occasional repeating specialized query, but have never broadened my usage to anything more-general.
[+] BelenusMordred|4 years ago|reply
> You really need to see these results to appreciate them.

Seems more like the quality of the queries rather than the results. Many of the complaints I see about google and friends is related to them dumbing down search for the global common denominator.

[+] sliq|4 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] vortico|4 years ago|reply
1. It's slow, even for simple microsecond computations like log(2). Takes about 5-20 seconds to load a page on my 1Gb fiber connection. Opening Python/SymPy Gamma is much faster for most things. https://gamma.sympy.org/input/?i=log%282%29

2. Every time I use it, a box saying

    NEW: Use textbook math notation to enter your math. TRY IT
pops up over the result, and clicking the X doesn't hide it the next time I search. This adds ~3 seconds to the result time.

3. I'm a long-term Mathematica user, but typing literal Mathematica syntax usually never works, except for simple expressions.

4. Results are PNGs, and copy-pasting a numerical result takes a few unnecessary clicks. "Plain Text" > Copy.

[+] quotemstr|4 years ago|reply
> Takes about 5-20 seconds to load a page on my 1Gb fiber connection

Wolfram Alpha is implemented in Mathematica, which --- to understate the situation --- was never intended as a high performance backend server language. I suspect that's the reason for the bad performance.

"As a result, the five million lines of Mathematica code that make up Wolfram|Alpha are equivalent to many tens of millions of lines of code in a lower-level language like C, Java, or Python." [1]

Sure, there's something to be said for implementing logic in high-level code, but without a plan for lowering that high-level logic to machine code in a way that performs well, you're setting yourself up for long-term pain.

[1] https://blog.wolframalpha.com/2009/05/01/the-secret-behind-t...

[+] hdjjhhvvhga|4 years ago|reply
> Opening Python/SymPy Gamma is much faster for most things.

Is there a way to make it plot multivariate functions? I tried but whenever I enter two variables it says "Cannot plot multivariate function." I've seen many Python packages plotting multivariate functions so I'm convinced it should be possible.

[+] _fizz_buzz_|4 years ago|reply
I usually use python for math stuff also, however I think the log(2) example is maybe the wrong example. I basically got an instant result for that (just recorded this): https://imgur.com/a/g5slHsR
[+] herpderperator|4 years ago|reply
Your Internet bandwidth is not relevant when talking about a compute-heavy backend like this. Wolfram|Alpha is not going to load any faster on a 1Gbps connection than it will on a 20Mbps connection, other than some static assets, but even that isn't going to be hugely noticeable if we're talking about 2ms RTT on fibre vs 8-20ms RTT on cable/DSL. If you're downloading a giant file off a nearby CDN, then sure, 1Gbps fibre is useful. I can max out my 1400Mbps cable connection downloading things this way (it's mind-blowing...), and my latency to my upstream gateway outside of my house is 8ms. But Wolfram|Alpha isn't going to load 40% faster for me than it will for you since it's I/O bound and your end-to-end latency is waiting for the backend to complete your request.

I will say, though, that Wolfram|Alpha could be "optimised" in the sense that it could do less fancy JS and be a simple box with a submit button, like SymPy Gamma.

[+] portpecos|4 years ago|reply
I used it for Calc 1 and 2. It helped me check my work for Limits, derivatives, integrals, Reimann Summs, Series, Sequences. I love the part that says "Show Step By Step" because I can figure out which step I made an error.

The answers in the back of the book didn't tell me step-by-step how I solved the problem. It just gave me the answer and there are many times I couldn't figure out which step I made the error. Usually it was some dumb mistake, but by identifying the dumb mistake, I could remember to double check that similar step in future problems.

I had a hard time using it for Classical Physics to check my work.

[+] kragen|4 years ago|reply
Have you tried using Sympy? It's not as sophisticated as Mathematica but it's a lot more usable than Wolfram Vertical Line Alpha.
[+] primitivesuave|4 years ago|reply
I think the strategy of Wolfram Research has shifted from trying to sell Wolfram Alpha as a standalone service, to selling the Wolfram Language with WA functions for retrieving standard datasets. A finance professional, for example, probably did not gain much information from asking WA "would it be better to invest $100 in GOOG or FB in 2013?", but the `FinancialData` function for pulling end-of-day stock prices enabled these people to do interesting analysis that they couldn't have done otherwise.

(source: conjecture, but I did work at WR for 3 years and on the initial Wolfram|Alpha release)

[+] antattack|4 years ago|reply
"how many 3mm circles pack in 15mm circle"

WA offers answers with drawings. Google cannot do that.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+3mm+circles+p...

[+] varenc|4 years ago|reply
Of course if you try the query with spheres you see Wolfram Alpha's typical catatrophic failure.

I love WA and use it all the time, but it's so hard to know when a query will work and when it won't. When it fails it fails hilariously.

Here's some of my favorite queries:

- https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2.2+bagels%2Fday+*+ave...

- https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=time+dilation+given+v+...

- https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=400+miles+%2F+20mpg+*+...

- https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+unemployment+rate+v...

- https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=warp+speed+6+in+deep+s...

[+] hawkjo|4 years ago|reply
This is amazing! The rest of this thread completely buried the lead. Delightful.
[+] pugworthy|4 years ago|reply
Curiously it can't calculate it if you change 15mm circle to 15mm square.
[+] ivansavz|4 years ago|reply
For me, I never got into using it much (due to lack of experience with Mathematica syntax). I had some niche uses like "how many work days between <date1> and <date2>" but that's hardly so important.

Instead I use the SymPy Live shell https://live.sympy.org/ which does most of what I need in terms of math calculations. I'm a big fan of the sharable links (the thumbtack button below the prompt) that you can post in comments to show an entire calculation encoded in the URL querystring, e.g., https://live.sympy.org/?evaluate=factor(x**2%2B5*x%2B6)%0A%2... (factoring a polynomial), or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23158095 (linear algebra helper function).

[+] dmlerner|4 years ago|reply
Sympy live shell is decent, and the latex rendering is pretty sweet. But, it's on ancient versions of everything, runs slowly, and has a C- UI.

Instead, I use Colab with Sympy + latex output and matplotlib (and most other things you could want to import, pre-installed). It's running new versions of things, and backed by more power, with an option to pay for even more. The latex rendering took a bit of poking around stackoverflow, but works just fine.

Feel free to copy:

https://colab.research.google.com/gist/dmlerner/23543255fdde...

[+] neltnerb|4 years ago|reply
What do you mean? I used it to solve a nasty impedance network for the real and imaginary components yesterday and the solutions were accurate.

Edit: Maybe it's just good enough that people treat it as a tool and see no need to market it. It consistently has worked fine-ish for years and is useful at what it does.

[+] zandorg|4 years ago|reply
My meaning was just that I saw it sometimes referenced on HN, but I haven't seen it mentioned for a while now. Hence my search and results showing 8 years since.

I guess what I should be doing is looking at the Alexa ranking of Wolfram Alpha.

[+] GeorgeTirebiter|4 years ago|reply
Could please share your query / code to do this? Seems like it would make a good Example. Thanks!
[+] isoprophlex|4 years ago|reply
I use it exclusively when I'm drunk, to calculate how drunk I am

"4 drinks in 3 hours at 64 kg"

[+] cx42net|4 years ago|reply
I'm unable to try to compute something similar by indicating the quantity and the percentage of alcohol, such as :

"2 beers (composition of 8% alcohol, 44cl) in 1 hour at 80kg"

I tried with or without parenthesis and with varying query. Never worked.

Any ideas?

(I'm interesting on knowing the level of blood alcohol percentage and the duration it takes to go under the limit, depending on the percentage of alcohol and quantity)

[+] gadrev|4 years ago|reply
I can't beleive this works.
[+] bborud|4 years ago|reply
A more important question: what happened to Wolfram? I think they missed an opportunity to have an enormous market by pricing themselves into a niche. They had so much cool stuff that could have played a much larger role in most developers lives. And which would have funneled more users into higher end premium products.

Every now and then I go to their site to have a look -- and then realize that I'm not going to go subscribe to some piece of software I'm unsure I will be using enough to justify the cost.

[+] gfodor|4 years ago|reply
Wolfram himself is working on physics and fulfilling a life long dream. (He was just on Lex’s podcast.) Say what you will about his contributions but it is hard to argue he hasn’t been enormously successful at achieving his goals of developing an entire cathedral of work he can use for his own intellectual persuits.
[+] jazzyjackson|4 years ago|reply
they have plenty of customers and are always hiring so I don’t think there’s much pressure to change their business model… they have a 15 day trial and IMO the ~$200/yr I pay for a dual boot personal license is worth it for the documentation alone, AMA

I think their online book is a very nice intro: https://www.wolfram.com/language/elementary-introduction/2nd...

[+] yummypaint|4 years ago|reply
I used to use it extensively during my early PhD work for back of the envelope calculations. Unfortunately it became steadily harder to enter queries and have them understood. About half a decade ago they broke about 70% of what i used it for by refusing to show results for modestly complex calculations and instead throwing up nag messages for the paid version. The paid version last i saw was not available through an institutional license.

Last time I tried to use retrieval features for nuclear data there was absolutely no citation info or documentation whatsoever, just numbers from who knows where. WA had so much potential but peaked about 3 years after it came out as far as i can tell. That being said it's still vastly superior to doing calculations with google.

[+] voldacar|4 years ago|reply
> The paid version last i saw was not available through an institutional license.

Does your institution have mathematica? In mathematica you can query WA directly, and it gives you as much (or possibly more, from how it seems to behave for me) computing time as people with WA pro subscriptions. I use it all the time for stuff like graphing complicated implicit 3d surfaces or doing multiple integrals, stuff where I know the relevant mathematica command but I would rather not type it out fully

[+] wheels|4 years ago|reply
I use it semi-regularly; once a week or so. It's a genuinely useful tool that was just greatly oversold on launch. Things I use it for:

- Converting units while cooking. I prefer to cook by weight, and for most ingredients, you can do something like "2 cups of flour in g"

- Stuff I'd have used a scientific calculator in an earlier era: simple systems of equations, plots, etc.

- Comparing stats on countries, e.g. GDP growth in various countries

[+] faeyanpiraat|4 years ago|reply
The issue with recipe weight unit conversions might be that the author literally had a cup or spoon or whatever with a specific capacity which would not equal the standard units, therefore you are converting one inaccurate amount to an other one.
[+] JanMa|4 years ago|reply
I used it a lot while pursuing my electrical engineering degree. It's ability to solve almost any mathematical formula and to show you the solution step by step is just plain awesome.

I guess it's safe to say I would not have passed some algebra and electrical engineering exams without it.

One tip I have (not sure if it still works though): Buy the Android or iOS app for a few bucks to get access to the step by step solutions if you can't afford the pro subscription.

[+] still_grokking|4 years ago|reply
The pricing seems random to me. (Even it seems cheaper than last time I've checked).

It's ~20% more expensive in Euro than in Dollar. (And Poland, which I checked for curiosity as it's in the EU but does not use Euro, has a price in Pound with is even higher; Poland is not a rich country).

Also I don't think charging for example people in countries in Africa as much as for example US people makes any sense.

The service is really great for some questions but the commercial offer never added up for me.

If the software would be OpenSource and run on prem I would consider buying some additional online services for it (even at the current random price point and without having a real use case; it's not more expensive than an average online game, so bearable). It would make also that "Wolfram Language" worth having a look at. But I don't bother even glimpsing at closed source programming languages. That's especially one of the things they do very poorly.

[+] AussieWog93|4 years ago|reply
>It's ~20% more expensive in Euro than in Dollar.

Keep in mind US prices don't include sales tax (VAT).

[+] upbeat_general|4 years ago|reply
My guess is that it’s a bit too complicated/slow for a lot of ordinary people and too finicky for a lot of technical people.

I’m a frequent Mathematica user and I find almost all of my use cases require several different attempts to get the desired result w/wolfram alpha. Meanwhile, most people who don’t get the right result the first time will probably just give up and not think to rephrase the query.

[+] ReleaseCandidat|4 years ago|reply
I mainly use it as an english dictionary of math terminology.

Although for the basics of differential geometry like the Weingarten equations and the Dupin indicatrix WA is lacking - as is Wikipedia except for the articles in the german Wikipedia. And I haven't found a way to get to the 'Weingarten equations' searching for 'Weingarten', you only find him by the full name 'Julius Weingarten'. :(

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weingartenabbildung https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weingarten+equations https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indikatrix https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=dupin+indikatrix

[+] gcanyon|4 years ago|reply
The problem WA is attempting to address is nearly impossible: to trust WA as a reliable source of information, you have to be confident it will be able to answer the question you're asking. If you work in a specific problem space, you can probably know that, but even if WA does know your particular area, you likely know even better ways to answer your questions.

Putting it another way, it's too hard to know what WA knows and doesn't know. I alluded to this in a post I wrote back when WA first came out: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/bing-wolfram-alpha-... "As Alpha grows and adds new problem domains it will become more and more useful, but it will continue to be necessary to understand what it can and can’t do, and how to get it to divulge what it knows."

[+] Ansil849|4 years ago|reply
Honestly, Google can now do most of the basic things that WA could do.

And the more complex things WA could do oftentimes require a bunch of trial and error to figure out the correct syntax/phrasing to use to get correct results, to the point where it was just easier to either do the calculation manually or find a dedicated site for it.

So it has just lost utility for me.

[+] _game_of_life|4 years ago|reply
It's still around but I imagine it is experiencing a bunch of competitors biting chunks out of it.

A lot more people can script now, so open source packages of computer algebra systems (Sage, numpy, scipy etc.) Probably take a small bite.

And then you have closed source ones to consider like Matlab.

The second largest chunk probably being bitten out of it is its web and app competitors (desmos, symbolab, etc.) Alexa rankings show that these see a lot more traffic and engagement (2 - 3 times).

Finally, a small portion of its functionality is now covered by search engines. I imagine they'll continue to gobble things up. There are also a few good Web tools, I used one for a linear algebra course I found a lot better than the freeware version of WolframAlpha that came with my Raspberry Pi.

I can't find any reports on its revenue or net income. I would be super curious who uses it. Maybe it's growing... who knows? I also remember it being recommended a lot in the early 2010s.

[+] lousken|4 years ago|reply
I used to use it a lot but google now provides most answers as well and much faster. Wolframalpha performance is still sluggish and 6 second loading for a bunch of text (simple queries like `6cet to pst` is frustrating)