Wolfram Alpha: 5 cons and 5 pros

Is it necessary to present Wolfram Alpha, the new online research tool everybody is talking about those days? Obviously not! This is why we prefer to express our thoughts on it in 5 cons and 5 pros about Wolfram Alpha

5 cons on Wolfram Alpha

1. Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine but a Computational Knowledge engine. What in earth does this stand for?

Easy: Wolfram Alpha is not able to perform searches in an easy way. You have to put search terms with the right and correct words!

2. What kind of information is available in Wolfram Alpha?

Not a lot. Alpha is very specific. The best you can look for is mathematics, chemical compounds, dates, units or even the temperature in Madrid…Don’t get disappointed, we’ve warned you.

3. Wolfram Alpha is not clever on the contrary to what it claims to be

Information retrieval is based on a semantics and words tagging. With Alpha, if a word has not yet been tagged for one of its meanings in a context, you won’t get anything of it. What a pity! For example, try to ask it “Who discovered polonium?. It is not able to answer, while in google the same question is easily answered.

4. Wolfram Alpha is for hype people!

I mean, who is going to ask “How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?” in order to have this result mentioning Bob Dylan. What if we ask “Who is Luke’s father?“, well, here goes the answer namely not much.

5. Wolfram Alpha is not a resource for biomedical information.

Despite what you’ve heard about it, Alpha doesn’t provide life science publications as novoseek does.

5 Pros on Wolfram Alpha

1. Wolfram Alpha, this is not a search engine! It’s better.

The way information is treated and presented is far from what you’ve seen and experienced until now. It is not Google nor Wikipedia. It is able to “computate” almost anything you ask it. Try solve a x^2 + b x + c = 0 for x

2. Wolfram Alpha could revolutionize learning and searching on the internet

Although it takes much to learn how to use it and obtain effective results, it could be an interesting tool for pupils, students and professors.

3. Wolfram Alpha has some surprises and easter eggs for you to discover.

Here goes the top 10 easter eggs in wolfram alpha. There may be more, it’s up to you to look for them.

4. The Wolfram Alpha team is working hard to keep it updated.

If there are some failures, be patient and for sure they’ll be fixed soon. The “Give us your feedback” box at the bottom of pages is there for you to point out these.

5. They are working on making Wolfram Alpha more user friendly

According to statements, they will release an API and more detailed search boxes in order to make searches easier.

Obviously, search engines on the internet are bringing changes and new ways of accessing information. Is this another step towards web 3.0 ?

We recommend you to read:

• Take your searches to the next level with my novoseek
• 7 on average: a story about synonyms in biomedical concepts
• Professional usage of Google
• Your handy my novoseek guide v1.0
• Tip #4 to improve searches in novoseek: Create email alerts