How to Use Wolfram Alpha

There is a newer website called Wolfram Alpha that has gone public--and has been compared to Google or even Wikipedia--but in actuality it is not meant to do what either of those do. Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine. It doesn't do searches; it does computations. In this article I will explain a bit about how it's used--so that you can see if it is the right tool to gather the data you need.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Wolfram Alpha Results

   Since Wolfram Alpha computes answers, you must query it with something that can be computed. Here, for example, I asked it for the population of Los Angeles. It returned the number and built a graph showing population growth over several decades.

2. Wolfram Alpha Results

   I asked it about AT&T stock. I got a huge page of results, including the current price, the business fundamentals about the company, recent returns, a price history, performance and comparisons, a daily return analysis, future projections and more.

3. Wolfram Alpha Results

   Wolfram Alpha does math, of course, even calculus. I didn't know how to ask it something about calculus, but I gave it a simple equation to solve.

4. Wolfram Alpha Results

   You can compare items with a forward slash (/) between them. For example, I typed GDP USA / China in the query. The results were expressed as an equation, a value and shown on a graph.

5. You can also use a plus sign (+) between items. For example, I typed blue+red and got results showing the color created by combining these two colors, along with a variety of ways to express the color mathematically in HTML. Complementary colors and a color triad were also given.

Tips & Warnings

• Wolfram Alpha doesn't do everything. There are many queries that you might be able to get answered from Google that it won't understand, but as I said, it isn't meant to be a search engine. It's a computational tool.

Resources

• Wolfram Alpha