Enter Wolfram|Alpha: 2 - hands on

This post is a follow up from the introduction on the interface website of Wolfram Alpha.

Let's look at some fun examples on how to use the new Answer Engine.

Query: where is god?

Now would you be surprised if a computer system knew the answer? I was, because it did. It helpfully offers to give coordinates and satellite image to God. (hint: far from the middle-east)

Answer: Hungary.


Can it predict major astronomical events?

Q: next solar eclipse in rio de janeiro
A: 11:53 am BRT | Sunday, February 26, 2017 (7.748 years from now)

Noted, but I will probably forget by then. Also, this is not a total eclipse. The next total eclipse observable from Rio will be on 2:41 pm BRT | Saturday, August 12, 2045 (36.22 years from now)

Similarly, we can get a log of such astronomical events.

Q: last solar eclipse in rio de janeiro
A: 9:31 am BRT | Tuesday, September 11, 2007 (1.721 years ago)

I missed it, unfortunately. I know, I suck.

How about my daily lunch's nutritional facts?

Q: rice + black beans + chicken breast + carrot + beet + lettuce + tomato
A: full nutrition table

Nice. It gives all the amounts for not only of calories (who cares about that anyway? ), but also all the vitamins, proteins and fibers. Looks like my lunch of choice is not that bad.

How about a Math example? A friend of mine recently asked my help calculating the roots of a polynomial with degree large enough so that Maple was barfing for her. Maybe there is a way to tweak maple in order to calculate this symbolically. Maybe this is big enough so as it only can be done numerically. I'm no expert either in CAS nor algebra, but 20 doesn't look like an excessive degree, especially for such a simple polynomial, but obviously I must be wrong.

Q: z^23=1

Cool. It not only gives the roots in a nice I-did-it-with-pencil-and-paper-not-matlab way, but also plots them in the C plane. It was also fast.


I bet with the proper query syntax, my friend could solve the proper system to get the roots that interest her Finite Fields problem. (hint: separate polynomials with comma).

Does it keep up to date?

Q: swine flu
A: (as of 26/05/2009)


Usability bonus: it noted from my IP address that I'm in Brazil, and provided the summary for my country. I can attest that it still showed the total of 9 cases during the whole day in which the amount was updated to 11 in the local media, so it means it doesn't get epidemiological data in real time from, say, CDC, which would be cool. However, it probably also means that data must be manually curated, which is good for accuracy purposes.

To end this not-a-tutorial list of examples, what about the most profound question one can ask to any system?

Q: life the universe and everything

WA knows the correct answer. It couldn't get any better. I won't spoil the answer, you'll have to see it for yourself.

Do you know other fun queries? Post in the comments.

Update: corrected images.