Wolfram|Alpha: Making the World's Knowledge Computable

Wolfram|Alpha came online at 7 pm CDT on Friday, May 15. I had first heard of Wolfram|Alpha from a NY Times clipping shared with me by a teacher at school this week. Until I actually "saw" it, I had no idea of the power of this new web resource, and the impact it can have for learners everywhere! Wolfram|Alpha was conceived by "Mathematica creator and scientist Stephen Wolfram as a way to bring computational exploration to the widest possible audience." From the website:

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Take a peak at the sample topics and examples of data you can retrieve at http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/ which include Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Astronomy, Weather, Socioeconomic Data, Health and Medicine, Food and Nutrition, Words and Linguistics, Places and Geography, Sports, Music, Money and more.

I would also highly encourage you to view Stephen Wolfram's 13-minute screencast "Introduction to Wolfram|Alpha" to experience the scope of information you can retrieve on the Wolfram|Alpha website or view this shorter version (Part 1) posted on YouTube:



And, for a bit of background .…
Stephen Wolfram introduced the Wolfram|Alpha project during a recent webcast from The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TIOH80Qg7Q

Learn more about Stephen Wolfram from this 2003 University of California lecture, "A New Kind of Science" available on YouTube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eC14GonZnU

Wow!