What is Wolfram Alpha app used for?

Whether you're wanting to learn more about languages of the world or find the perfect word to use in Scrabble®, Wolfram|Alpha provides computational insights into how we communicate. In addition to dictionary-style information for tens of thousands of English words, Wolfram|Alpha contains linguistic data for thousands of languages, character encodings and even emoticons. Use Wolfram|Alpha to find the meaning of a word, translate a word into other languages, discover how frequently a word appeared in classic literature and much more.

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Technology[edit]
Overview[edit]
Development[edit]
History[edit]
Copyright claims[edit]
A HIGHER LEVEL OF PROGRAMMING
TAKE ALGORITHMS FOR GRANTED
CLOUD-BASED AUTOMATION
REPRESENTING THE REAL WORLD
ONE LANGUAGE FOR EVERYTHING
SCALE AS YOU GO
CONNECT TO EVERYTHING

WolframAlpha was released on May 18, 2009 and is based on Wolfram's earlier product Wolfram Mathematica, a technical computing platform. WolframAlpha gathers data from academic and commercial websites such as the CIA's The World Factbook, the United States Geological Survey, a Cornell University Library publication called All About Birds, Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Dow Jones, the Catalogue of Life,[3] CrunchBase,[6] Best Buy,[7] and the FAA to answer queries.[8] A Spanish version was launched in 2022.[9]

Technology[edit]

Overview[edit]

Users submit queries and computation requests via a text field. WolframAlpha then computes answers and relevant visualizations from a knowledge base of curated, structured data that come from other sites and books. It is able to respond to particularly phrased natural language fact-based questions. It displays its "Input interpretation" of such a question, using standardized phrases. Mathematical symbolism can also be parsed by the engine, which responds with numerical and statistical results.

Development[edit]

WolframAlpha is written in the Wolfram Language, a general multi-paradigm programming language, and implemented in Mathematica, that is proprietary and not commonly used by developers.[10]

WolframAlpha was used to power some searches in the Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo search engines but is no longer used to provide search results.[11][12] For factual question answering, WolframAlpha was formerly used by Apple's Siri and Amazon Alexa for math and science queries but is no longer operational within those services.[13][14] WolframAlpha data types became available beginning in July 2020 with Microsoft Excel, but the Microsoft-Wolfram partnership ended nearly two years later, in 2022, in favor of Microsoft Power Query data types.[15] WolframAlpha functionality in Microsoft Excel will be over in June 2023.[16]

History[edit]

Launch preparations began on May 15, 2009 at 7 p.m. CDT and were broadcast live on Justin.tv. The plan was to publicly launch the service a few hours later. However, there were issues due to extreme load. The service was officially launched on May 18, 2009,[17] receiving mixed reviews.[18][19] In 2009, Wolfram Alpha advocates pointed to its potential, some even stating that how it determines results is more important than current usefulness.[18] WolframAlpha was initially launched as free, but later WolframAlpha attempted monetizing the service by launching an iOS application with a cost of $50, while the website itself was free.[20] That plan was abandoned after criticism.[21]

On February 8, 2012, WolframAlpha Pro was released,[22] offering users additional features for a monthly subscription fee.[22][23]

WolframAlpha is used by some high-school and college students to cheat on math homework, though the company says the service helps students understand math with its problem-solving capabilities.[24]

Copyright claims[edit]

InfoWorld published an article warning readers of the potential implications of giving an automated website proprietary rights to the data it generates.[25] Free software advocate Richard Stallman also opposes the idea of recognizing the site as a copyright holder and suspects that Wolfram would not be able to make this case under existing copyright law.[26]

Remember the Star Trek computer? It's finally happening--with Wolfram|Alpha. Building on 25 years of development led by Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha has rapidly become the world's definitive source for instant expert knowledge and computation.

Across thousands of domains--with more continually added--Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you.

Parts of Wolfram|Alpha are used in the Apple Siri Assistant; this app gives you access to the full power of the Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine. Domains covered by Wolfram|Alpha include:

With its scalable character and built-in local parallelization, the Wolfram Language allows instant scale-up for desktop-cloud hybrid workflows.