Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

I use it regularly. Sometimes it’s broken, and maybe nobody notices but me? :)

Their natural language queries for things that I know they know about are amazing. Here are some that I have used recently. You really need to see these results to appreciate them.

I wanted to know how tall my daughter might be.

   8 year old female 55 lbs

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=8%20year%20old%20female...

I wanted to know the nutrition content of an egg sandwich.

   1 egg, two slices whole wheat bread, one slice of cheddar, two pieces of bacon

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%20egg%2C%20two%20slic...

I was curious about the relative usage of two names over time.

   Michael, Henry

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Michael%2C%20Henry

1. It's slow, even for simple microsecond computations like log(2). Takes about 5-20 seconds to load a page on my 1Gb fiber connection. Opening Python/SymPy Gamma is much faster for most things. https://gamma.sympy.org/input/?i=log%282%29

2. Every time I use it, a box saying

    NEW: Use textbook math notation to enter your math. TRY IT

pops up over the result, and clicking the X doesn't hide it the next time I search. This adds ~3 seconds to the result time.

3. I'm a long-term Mathematica user, but typing literal Mathematica syntax usually never works, except for simple expressions.

4. Results are PNGs, and copy-pasting a numerical result takes a few unnecessary clicks. "Plain Text" > Copy.

Siri and Alexa pass a lot of questions to Wolfram Alpha.

When Apple first started using it, they were responsible for 25% of all WA traffic. With Alexa, I assume that the majority of WA's queries are coming from smart assistants at this point. (https://9to5mac.com/2012/02/07/four-months-in-siri-represent..., https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/20/18150654/alexa-wolfram-a...)

I used it for Calc 1 and 2. It helped me check my work for Limits, derivatives, integrals, Reimann Summs, Series, Sequences. I love the part that says "Show Step By Step" because I can figure out which step I made an error.

The answers in the back of the book didn't tell me step-by-step how I solved the problem. It just gave me the answer and there are many times I couldn't figure out which step I made the error. Usually it was some dumb mistake, but by identifying the dumb mistake, I could remember to double check that similar step in future problems.

I had a hard time using it for Classical Physics to check my work.

I think the strategy of Wolfram Research has shifted from trying to sell Wolfram Alpha as a standalone service, to selling the Wolfram Language with WA functions for retrieving standard datasets. A finance professional, for example, probably did not gain much information from asking WA "would it be better to invest $100 in GOOG or FB in 2013?", but the `FinancialData` function for pulling end-of-day stock prices enabled these people to do interesting analysis that they couldn't have done otherwise.

(source: conjecture, but I did work at WR for 3 years and on the initial Wolfram|Alpha release)

"how many 3mm circles pack in 15mm circle"

WA offers answers with drawings. Google cannot do that.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+3mm+circles+p...

For me, I never got into using it much (due to lack of experience with Mathematica syntax). I had some niche uses like "how many work days between and " but that's hardly so important.

Instead I use the SymPy Live shell https://live.sympy.org/ which does most of what I need in terms of math calculations. I'm a big fan of the sharable links (the thumbtack button below the prompt) that you can post in comments to show an entire calculation encoded in the URL querystring, e.g., https://live.sympy.org/?evaluate=factor(x**2%2B5*x%2B6)%0A%2... (factoring a polynomial), or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23158095 (linear algebra helper function).

What do you mean? I used it to solve a nasty impedance network for the real and imaginary components yesterday and the solutions were accurate.

Edit: Maybe it's just good enough that people treat it as a tool and see no need to market it. It consistently has worked fine-ish for years and is useful at what it does.

I use it exclusively when I'm drunk, to calculate how drunk I am

"4 drinks in 3 hours at 64 kg"

A more important question: what happened to Wolfram? I think they missed an opportunity to have an enormous market by pricing themselves into a niche. They had so much cool stuff that could have played a much larger role in most developers lives. And which would have funneled more users into higher end premium products.

Every now and then I go to their site to have a look -- and then realize that I'm not going to go subscribe to some piece of software I'm unsure I will be using enough to justify the cost.

I used to use it extensively during my early PhD work for back of the envelope calculations. Unfortunately it became steadily harder to enter queries and have them understood. About half a decade ago they broke about 70% of what i used it for by refusing to show results for modestly complex calculations and instead throwing up nag messages for the paid version. The paid version last i saw was not available through an institutional license.

Last time I tried to use retrieval features for nuclear data there was absolutely no citation info or documentation whatsoever, just numbers from who knows where. WA had so much potential but peaked about 3 years after it came out as far as i can tell. That being said it's still vastly superior to doing calculations with google.

I use it semi-regularly; once a week or so. It's a genuinely useful tool that was just greatly oversold on launch. Things I use it for:

- Converting units while cooking. I prefer to cook by weight, and for most ingredients, you can do something like "2 cups of flour in g"

- Stuff I'd have used a scientific calculator in an earlier era: simple systems of equations, plots, etc.

- Comparing stats on countries, e.g. GDP growth in various countries

I used it a lot while pursuing my electrical engineering degree. It's ability to solve almost any mathematical formula and to show you the solution step by step is just plain awesome.

I guess it's safe to say I would not have passed some algebra and electrical engineering exams without it.

One tip I have (not sure if it still works though): Buy the Android or iOS app for a few bucks to get access to the step by step solutions if you can't afford the pro subscription.

The pricing seems random to me. (Even it seems cheaper than last time I've checked).

It's ~20% more expensive in Euro than in Dollar. (And Poland, which I checked for curiosity as it's in the EU but does not use Euro, has a price in Pound with is even higher; Poland is not a rich country).

Also I don't think charging for example people in countries in Africa as much as for example US people makes any sense.

The service is really great for some questions but the commercial offer never added up for me.

If the software would be OpenSource and run on prem I would consider buying some additional online services for it (even at the current random price point and without having a real use case; it's not more expensive than an average online game, so bearable). It would make also that "Wolfram Language" worth having a look at. But I don't bother even glimpsing at closed source programming languages. That's especially one of the things they do very poorly.

My guess is that it’s a bit too complicated/slow for a lot of ordinary people and too finicky for a lot of technical people.

I’m a frequent Mathematica user and I find almost all of my use cases require several different attempts to get the desired result w/wolfram alpha. Meanwhile, most people who don’t get the right result the first time will probably just give up and not think to rephrase the query.

I mainly use it as an english dictionary of math terminology.

Although for the basics of differential geometry like the Weingarten equations and the Dupin indicatrix WA is lacking - as is Wikipedia except for the articles in the german Wikipedia. And I haven't found a way to get to the 'Weingarten equations' searching for 'Weingarten', you only find him by the full name 'Julius Weingarten'. :(

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weingartenabbildung https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weingarten+equations https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indikatrix https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=dupin+indikatrix

The problem WA is attempting to address is nearly impossible: to trust WA as a reliable source of information, you have to be confident it will be able to answer the question you're asking. If you work in a specific problem space, you can probably know that, but even if WA does know your particular area, you likely know even better ways to answer your questions.

Putting it another way, it's too hard to know what WA knows and doesn't know. I alluded to this in a post I wrote back when WA first came out: https://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/bing-wolfram-alpha-... "As Alpha grows and adds new problem domains it will become more and more useful, but it will continue to be necessary to understand what it can and can’t do, and how to get it to divulge what it knows."

Honestly, Google can now do most of the basic things that WA could do.

And the more complex things WA could do oftentimes require a bunch of trial and error to figure out the correct syntax/phrasing to use to get correct results, to the point where it was just easier to either do the calculation manually or find a dedicated site for it.

So it has just lost utility for me.

It's still around but I imagine it is experiencing a bunch of competitors biting chunks out of it.

A lot more people can script now, so open source packages of computer algebra systems (Sage, numpy, scipy etc.) Probably take a small bite.

And then you have closed source ones to consider like Matlab.

The second largest chunk probably being bitten out of it is its web and app competitors (desmos, symbolab, etc.) Alexa rankings show that these see a lot more traffic and engagement (2 - 3 times).

Finally, a small portion of its functionality is now covered by search engines. I imagine they'll continue to gobble things up. There are also a few good Web tools, I used one for a linear algebra course I found a lot better than the freeware version of WolframAlpha that came with my Raspberry Pi.

I can't find any reports on its revenue or net income. I would be super curious who uses it. Maybe it's growing... who knows? I also remember it being recommended a lot in the early 2010s.

I used to use it a lot but google now provides most answers as well and much faster. Wolframalpha performance is still sluggish and 6 second loading for a bunch of text (simple queries like `6cet to pst` is frustrating)

For me it stopped working several years ago and wouldn't ever return answers for queries. I futzed about with it to try and make it work; came back a few times over a couple of years as I had been a big fan. Just assumed they'd killed it somehow. Mentioned it on HN and others said it worked. For some reason it works again for me now -- it not working allowed me to discover Geogebra, which was nice and served a lot of my previous uses for WA.

I think students these days use it for math/calculus, but it isn't seen as something special because they've always had it. It wasn't novel like for us.

How many astronomers does it take to change a light bulb?

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+astronomers+d...

None; astronomers prefer the dark.

Nothing. It's still solving my homework. (Sometimes.)

They put their "step-by-step" explanations behind a [login/pay]wall which made it significantly less useful.

Out of sight, out of mind. It's still there

I was enthusiastic, but for medium complexity questions I spend more time footing with syntax then it would take to do it myself. I probably use it for a high complexity question once every few months. I’m happy that it exists, on balance

> I did a search on comments on HN for Wolfram Alpha. Most posts are 8 years old, none newer, some older.

You searched wrong. Excluding today, the most recent comment was 7 days ago, and there were quite a few more in the past month.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1636070400&dateRange=custom&...

As someone who just signed up for an open university this semester, I'd love to hear opinions about Octave and Maxima for general purpose use. Especially for study, such as replacing Wolfram Alpha's step-by-step solutions.

I'm a Linux user and prefer an open-source solution. But I have no objection to paying a reasonable amount of money for a good commercial solution. Maybe Maple is worth looking at?

I use it whenever I have something mildly annoying to convert, especially dates. e.g. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1636221900+unix+time+i...

Probably an incredibly trivial use-case but still useful regularly for me...

It just can't answer the questions I have. Last time I tried it, I was looking for buoyancy of various gases, but it insisted any such question necessarily referred to stuff on water.

It did OK figuring the fake "temperature" of LHC beams that fusion people like to quote because they sound more impressive than GeV.

It's fun for life expectancy.

Step one: Ask for your own life expectancy.

Step two: Ask for the life expectancy of someone years' younger.

Step three: What.

Step four: Oh.

I imagine it just stopped being new.

For certain types of queries, Wolfram Alpha gives wonderful answers that are superior to almost every other general purpose search engine:

distance to the moon

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+to+the+moon

W.A. shows the actual current distance to the moon (as of right now, 224,520 miles). Google shows this as 238,900 miles, presumably an average value, but it has no explanation at all of what the number is. W.A. also includes a graph showing the variance. And a lot of other info.

Many thanks to WA for getting me through high school and college calculus.

I use it to solve differential equations.

I needed to plot something real quick to see if I’m picking correct function. I had don’t remember how many data points but no much, under 200 I believe. W.A. told me to piss off and pay for it. So obviously I went and spent an hour more to learn how to do that with Gnuplot and did it with Gnuplot. Now I always go for Gnuplot right away.

I still use it all the time fore unit conversions, odd time based questions, etc. I find it's way better than the Google results because if I think of something after the fact I can tack it on and WA figures it out better than Google. E.g. "12 ft to meters * 3" is not handled right by Google but is handled how I want by WA.

I use it regularly, like twice a week.

When I'm making exercises to explain to my students in the math class, I use W.A. to double check the answer.

I also use it for calculation for comments in HN. Sometimes I need to make a back of the envelope calculation, and W.A. can convert the units and other boring stuff.

I only ever use it for date math

For whatever reason, I like keeping track of 1000 day anniversaries

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000+days+after+today

Shortly before any kind of 3rd anniversary or birthday I try to remember to check this.

I still use it regularly too - even more so after listening to Stephen Wolfram’s 3 part podcast [1] with Lex Fridman where he discussed the latest developments in Wolfram, Mathematica etc

[1] https://youtu.be/ez773teNFYA

I use it ~6 times a year.

My luck is mixed:

* ~33% - It works

* ~33% occasions - I mess up syntax and give up

* ~33% - I mess up syntax, but believe it SHOULD be possible, and push much longer than I untended. Until finally settling on a partial solution, and wishing I knew more - but also recognising I should used a different tool e.g. excel

What do you mean? I use wolfram alpha for math question, plots, solving integral etc all the time

I use it often to calculate... Stuffs. They are great in calculating but I really need to envelope them with at least 6 layers of bracket for it to parse my equation correctly or it will use some weird notations/arrangements.

I use their online notebook environment a lot. https://lab.wolframcloud.com/ It's almost a free web version of their Mathematica.

I used it a lot more often back in college compared to now. Usually now it's for random one-off calculations I'm too lazy to do myself, like "how many weeks since 4/28" (my puppy's birthday).

I still use it regularly. the app is my go-to calculator.

it just hasn’t been updated in quite some time. there are a lot of ways the back end could support new UI features etc., but something seems to be holding it back.

I still definitely use it for teaching big O comparisons in a live / malleable way. Not sure I know of a comparable resource for that but maybe someone out there in the HNstroverse does?

I teach high school math. My kids use it all the time! This isn't entirely a bad thing. It's a very, very useful (and natural language) symbolic integrator for them.

Awww ;) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=i+love+you

Used it a bit at university to compute some complex integrals if I was stuck or feeling lazy. That was 11 years ago.

Don't think I've even visited the website in the past 6 years.

This? https://www.wolframalpha.com/

It's alive and quite healthy

I still use it once in a while when I don't want to bother converting non-base10 units, like to know the date in 90 days, or how many hours in x days, etc.

I think Siri gets some of its results from Wolfram Alpha.

I use it a couple of times a week. Sometimes it’s brilliant, and sometimes I have to find my answer somewhere else. Most of the time it does its job.

I just used it recently to plot weather data, population density, crime rate, and average home price of cities I was thinking of living in

I've been using it pretty much daily for over a decade now. I don't know how people ever did engineering without it.

Still the go-to when I need to solve a complex integral or even diff EQs. Amazing how well it parses that type of entry.

I bought Mathematica and I'm using its free text input instead. But I guess behind the scenes, it's WA again.

I also use it regularly. I do remote sensing and fine that and wikipedia indispensable.

I use it to check some results from derivative exercises for my calculus class.

It’s still there, and I use it regularly, probably several times per week.

There is no 'DOT' for a mathematical calculator. So confusing!

At University pretty much everyone I know uses it for homework.

I use it frequently. Unit conversions, and the solver.

I still use it frequently for any random calculations.

Since nobody is mentioning it, around that time Wolfram Alpha started paywalling a lot of the more useful features. I used to use it in school and stopped when that happened. I'm not sure if they changed course since then.

I use WA for complex math at least once a week.

Used a lot by math students to check answers.

This question reminds me of the time someone wrote to the letters page of a print publication (I think it was The New Statesman) asking "Whatever happened to the composer of the theme music for Trumpton?" (a popular children's TV series in the 1960s) and the composer wrote back saying "What do you mean whatever happened to me?"

To understand the state of Wolfram Alpha, you have to understand the guy behind it.

Wolfram Alpha was a pet project of Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Mathematica. He had grand visions for it. And for the first few years, it seemed like he was doubling down on it.

But then he got bored and started tackling a bigger problem: his own solution to the "theory of everything" problem -- something that has eluded the world's best physicists for decades.

But he was confident that he could best them all. Because he created Mathematica.

The scientific community wasn't having it:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-critic...