Thread: Wolfram Alpha, the Computational engine

Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram, the inventor of Mathematica -a multi-faceted program created in 1988 to provide a uniform system for ill forms of algorithmic computation, has landed in with yet another approach called computational engine.

Instead of searching the web and returning links, the computational engine called Wolfram Alpha generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base. The search engine basically brings you systematic factual knowledge, gets you things that are known, and are somehow public. It only deals with facts and not opinions. Data that this engine comes up with are mainly from internal knowledge base. An interesting thing here is that, the data in WolframlAlpha is derived by computations, often based on multiple sources. It deploys formulas and algorithms to compute answers for searchers. We can ask WolphramAplha many things in WolphramAplha . For example, you can ask about the molecular weight of cholesterol, location of a gene in the human genome, the number of people named John born in a particular year, the life expectancy of 50year-olds in a country, the performance of Google stock, the height of Mt. Everest, etc.