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HP Forum Archive 19

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Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #1 Posted by Pal G. on 18 May 2009, 3:56 p.m.

A new kind of search engine...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Enjoy,
PG

      
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #2 Posted by Chuck on 18 May 2009, 4:06 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by Pal G.

I've been playing with it:

integrated functions
plot 2D and 3D fucntions
solved 2nd order differential equations
found laplace and inverse laplace transforms
create a star chart
found the atomic structure for caffeine
compared stocks....

and all on my ipod touch!!!! That's power, baby. And never ending fun!

            
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #3 Posted by Katie Wasserman on 18 May 2009, 4:43 p.m.,
in response to message #2 by Chuck

It does lots of mathematics to be sure and knows a good bit about physical proprieties of natural and artificial things but it doens't know anything about HP calculators not even stuff it should know about like CORDIC algorithms -- I'm very disappointed.

                  
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #4 Posted by Nigel Bamber on 19 May 2009, 1:34 a.m.,
in response to message #3 by Katie Wasserman

Katie

Please excuse my ignorance but what is a CORDIC algorythm ?

Nigel

                        
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #5 Posted by Thomas Okken on 19 May 2009, 9:58 a.m.,
in response to message #4 by Nigel Bamber

They're very elegant and efficient algorithms for calculating transcendental functions (trigonometric functions and others). These algorithms made it possible for the HP-35 to have a full set of trigonometric and logarithmic functions despite its small amount of memory. See CORDIC in Wikipedia for more information.

      
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #6 Posted by Juergen Keller on 18 May 2009, 4:42 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by Pal G.

It is really smart i.e., it knows the answer to the following questions:

1) The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?

2) How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?

:-)

And of course, it knows the answer to more serious questions...

Juergen

            
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #7 Posted by Chuck on 18 May 2009, 5:43 p.m.,
in response to message #6 by Juergen Keller

...and if you've ever wondered how much wood a woodchuck can chuck....

of course I know this one already. :)

CHUCK

      
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #8 Posted by Allen on 18 May 2009, 11:27 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by Pal G.

It does not know what to do with John 3:16. .. That's a number. hmm.

            
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #9 Posted by BruceH on 21 May 2009, 6:52 p.m.,
in response to message #8 by Allen

Quote:
It does not know what to do with John 3:16. .. That's a number. hmm.
It should return this.
      
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #10 Posted by Valentin Albillo on 19 May 2009, 6:49 a.m.,
in response to message #1 by Pal G.

Hi Pal G:

    Really, really nice, thanks a lot for letting us know, much appreciated ! :-)

    Its mathematical capabilities are really astounding. I've tried a number of examples I've concocted myself that some of you might want to try in order to see the nice results, just copy-paste each line in its turn and don't forget to use the "More digits" option:

      1) solve LOG(PI^e+1491/505*LOG(x)^4)-PI=0

        A nice symbolic representation and 4 roots, the real ones being:

          X = 0.500000000051903

          X = 1.99999999979239

      2) solve (2002/X)^7+(2002/X)-71=0

        Six complex roots and the real one:

          X = 1093.00000007366+

      3) solve GAMMA(X)-85/31=0

        5 real roots displayed and among them

          X = 0.3259999953+

      4) solve X^5+X+6=0

        5 roots (4 complex, one real), all of them returned in both numeric and fully symbolic form

Best regards from V.

      
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #11 Posted by Namir on 19 May 2009, 10:53 a.m.,
in response to message #1 by Pal G.

Awsome site! I tried several examples for solving equations. Got the results I was looking for. You sometimes have to put the equation in a certain form to get the solution. for example:

solve log(X^4)-X=0

Does not give numerical roots, while:

solve 4*log(X)-X=0

Does give the two roots.

Namir

            
Re: Did everyone miss this? Wolfram Alpha now LIVE.
Message #12 Posted by Jake Schwartz on 19 May 2009, 4:14 p.m.,
in response to message #11 by Namir

It's funny....I typed in "googol" and it returned 10^100 in decimal, binary and prime factors, etc.

Then I typed in "google" and it returned the current value of Google stock and all sorts of info on the company :-)

Pretty slick.

Jake

      
very limited use IMHO
Message #13 Posted by Frank Boehm (Germany) on 20 May 2009, 8:45 a.m.,
in response to message #1 by Pal G.

and some funky responses

http://www72.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=wolfram+death

http://www72.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=alpha+beta

Well, if you are into maths, it's nice. If you need some statistic data tables, it's nice. For everything else, it seems to lack a bit of contents...


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