Wolfram Alpha

[an Answer Engine]

Contents
Introduction to Wolfram Alpha What is an Answer Engine? Answer Engine v/s Search Engine Features of Wolfram Alpha Knowledge areas covered Technology behind Wolfram Alpha Its Components Mathematica How Mathematica made Wolfram Alpha possible How it Works? One Coherent Architecture Smart Selection Method How is Wolfram Alpha better than Google Present uses Future of Wolfram Alpha References
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Introduction
Wolfram Alpha is an answer-engine developed by Wolfram Research, and was released in May 2009. Wolfram Alpha doesn't search the web, it uses data from massive databases and an engine powered by Mathematica to obtain the results.

It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer.
Users can enter queries in text or various other file formats. E.g. Binary, JPEG, PDF, WAV, XML, etc. It is also capable of responding to particularly phrased natural-language fact-based questions.
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What is an Answer Engine?

An Answer Engine / Computational Knowledge Engine is a web application that finds out specific answers to queries posted in natural language. In information retrieval and natural language processing (NLP), question answering (QA) is the task of automatically answering a question posed in natural language. To find the answer to a question, a QA computer program may use either a pre-structured database or a collection of natural language documents.

Answer Engine v/s Search Engine

Answer Engine
The result is an answer. It answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data. Users submit queries and computation requests via a text field or via various files(audio/ image/ pdf/ etc.) E.g. Wolfram Alpha, True Knowledge

Search Engine
The result is a list of documents/ web pages.

It searches for the matching keywords as posted in the query.

Users submit queries and computation requests via a text field, voice query or via audio/ image files. E.g. Google, Bing
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Features
Covers 30+ knowledge areas and disciplines. Accepts completely free-form input. Large no. of file types accepted as input. Generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity. Acts as a knowledge repository as well as a search engine. Visual clarity Easy interface It is supported by a huge and powerful database, therefore the accuracy. Supported by Mathematica, which takes care of all the calculations.
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Knowledge Areas Covered

Weather Chemistry

Engineering
Earth Sciences Units & Measures

Astronomy SocioEconomic Data

Places & Geography

Technology behind Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram|Alpha is written in 15 million lines of Mathematica code and runs on 10,000 x86 CPUs (though the number was upgraded soon after the launch). Two major components: 1. Massive Database(which is continually being populated and will be continued to be populated) 2. Mathematica(first product by Wolfram Research)

Contd.
Linguistic Analysis: New kinds of algorithms for 1000+ domains. Curated Data: 10+ trillion pieces of data from primary sources with continuous updating Dynamic computation: 50,000+ types of algorithms and equations. Computed presentation: 5,000+ types of visual and tabular output. Feedback: Users can submit suggestions/feedback through Community Forum and through feedback, which is used to enhance the Database.
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Components
Massive database
Wolfram Alpha has access to many trillion elements of data covering topics from maths to nutrition, physics to music, weather to anagrams. It deals with proprietary databases. Most data is input through a more complex, part automated, part manual system.

There's no general automatic input from the web here.

Instead Wolfram Alpha staff work with experts in different domains to decide which sources are the best. Some of this data arrives in real time. The data then goes through an automated procedure to clean and check it. Then it's verified by real-life experts to confirm that it all seems reliable.

Components
Mathematica
It is a computational software program used in scientific, engineering, and mathematical fields and other areas of technical computing. Mathematica applies intelligent automation in every part of the system, from algorithm selection to plot layout and user interface design. You get reliable, high-quality results without needing algorithm expertiseand even if you're an expert, you get results faster. Mathematica is used in Wolfram|Alpha for Computation, Visualization and Development. Mathematica can display items of data, graphs and more, all in just one line of code.
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Mathematica

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How Mathematica made Wolfram Alpha possible

Development environment Computational knowledge and intelligence Highly scalable grid computing High-performance enterprise deployment Built-in, computable data One coherent architecture Smart method selection Dynamic report generation Database connectivity High-level programming language Efficient text processing and linguistic analysis Wide-ranging, automated visualization capabilities Automated importing
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How it Works?
Developing an algorithm for specific context. Add it to the enterprise database. When user enters query it contacts the DB and computes the result. Answer with details shows up on the browser.

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One Coherent Architecture

Wolfram Alpha needsOne systematic way to load, hold and work with every imaginable type of information with above which includes - algorithms, data, etc.

Mathematica providesA unique symbolic architecture that holds everything- data, graphics, programs, math- in a unified structure, yet is flexible enough to keep the original form of almost anything. This allows Wolfram Alpha's programmers to always work from one structure.
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Smart Selection Method

Wolfram Alpha needs the highest-level base of expertise from which to build linguistic understanding. Mathematica delivers- A separation of the task from the method so users don't need detailed algorithmic knowledge. Uses natural language processing. Converts all tasks to methods for natural language processing.

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How is Wolfram Alpha better than Google?

Complex queries Any number of arguments can be entered at a time. Thats why concatenating many arguments in a query often works extremely well. It gives a comparison of all the entities youve fed it.

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How is Wolfram Alpha better than Google?

Localization Googles result depends on various sites and as such it cannot force every site out there to practice localization. Wolfram Alpha, for the most part, does not depend on other sites for the data its giving you, and therefore its localization works better.

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How is Wolfram Alpha better than Google?

Precision With Wolfram Alpha you dont have to worry about getting the wrong information. It gives you the right answer (depending, of course, on the accuracy of its own index), or no answer at all.

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How is Wolfram Alpha better than Google?

Comparison With Wolfram Alpha you can easily compare several data samples and get not only results, but also handy graphs, ratios, tables and historical data comparisons. Google, on the other hand only, indexes websites that can do such work for you.

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How is Wolfram Alpha better than Google?

Calculation Wolfram Alpha acts as a Super Calculator, incorporates all kinds of calculators into one. Google has been dabbling with this, adding currency conversion and other simple calculations to its search service.

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Present Uses of Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is used to power some searches in the Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo search engines. Wolfram Alpha is queried by Apple's Siri for factual question answering as well as the Dexetra's clone of it for Andriod Iris. The application is a hit among students, teachers and anyone who surfs the net for answers rather than answer options (read: web pages).
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Future of Wolfram Alpha

Search Engines like Google, Bing only index web pages with matching keywords in the query. Also WA incorporates a large no. of information and accepts data in free-form. These have made WA a very sought after application in many devices since its release in May 2009.

Its fast and accurate.

Database is huge and is being continuously populated, even in real time. Wolfram Alpha is the product of automation and machine learning. The scope and market of Wolfram Alpha is thus huge.
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References
www.wolframalpha.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Alpha http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040816.html http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-06/ts_levy http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/how-the-hell-doeswolfram-alpha-work--599561 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347018,00.asp http://mashable.com/2009/05/19/wolfram-alpha-better-thangoogle/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/08/wolfram-alpha-computesanswers-to-factual-questions-this-is-going-to-be-big/

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Thank You !

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