My story comparing
results from Google and Wolfram Alpha met
with considerable curiosity from about 250 commenters on Slashdot, as well as more on this site.
Some critiqued my approach, others wondered what would’ve
happened if the queries had been worded differently, and others posed
hypothetical searches of their own. I’ll try to answer these questions and
comments in this post.
In my story, I described searching for “Cancer New York.”
Wolfram interpreted this as a hunt for the constellation, and it gave me astronomy
information. Google gave me links to cancer centers and a state cancer
registry, which seemed about right.
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But one Slashdot commenter called “chill” fired back, “Nobody knows what the hell you mean with ‘Cancer New York’ because there is no context. How about ‘cancer
statistics for new york’ or ‘cancer treatment in new york’?” Another
commenter made a similar point, adding, “All his other searches are
equally stupid.” So I went back and tried “What are the rates of
cancer in new york,” “Cancer rate in new york,” and a few other
variations in that spirit. In each case, Wolfram Alpha came back saying it
“isn’t sure what to do with your input.”
Another commenter, “lymond01,”
wondered if Wolfram Alpha knew Demi Moore’s age (as Google does) and whether it
would point a searcher to the primary source. Wolfram did fine, giving her age
as 46 years, 5 months, and 25 days. However, while it listed several sources,
it wasn’t clear from which source it drew the answer. So if I had been writing
a news story, I would have been left high and dry–not wanting to quote a
search engine, and not able to quickly discern the primary source. That
same commenter wanted to know if Wolfram could answer the question “How many French
died at the Battle of Agincourt?” I tried; it couldn’t.
Finally, this commenter added, “Eventually, this will
all boil down to me driving in my car and saying, ‘Computer. Tell me: At
what speed did Marty McFly need to drive to travel in time?’” So I actually
went and tried this, and a few other variations. Wolfram didn’t know anything
about Marty McFly (the protagonist of the film Back to the Future), but
when I tried “flux capacitor” (the gadget in the film that powers the
time machine), Wolfram interpreted my question as “power required to
operate the flux capacitor in the DeLorean DMC-12 time machine” and gave
the correct answer: 1.2 gigawatts, which it further elaborated was one-tenth the power of the Space Shuttle at
launch.
“Atomicjake” wanted to know how Wolfram would do with the following searches: “How many bull terriers are in the UK,” “How many
blind people live in the US,” “What is the color of a
strawberry,” and “strawberry blackberry.” Wolfram was unable to
answer any of the first three. On “strawberry blackberry,” it gave me
a nutrition label listing the nutrition information for 140 grams of
strawberries and 144 grams (one cup) of blackberries. Note that it gave the
combined nutrition information.
Critiquing my search for “10 pounds kilograms” and
my complaint that Wolfram Alpha interpreted this as an effort to multiply 10
pounds times 1 kilogram, “maxwell demon”
remarked, “WA’s interpretation is the most reasonable. After all, it’s the
standard way to denote multiplications (as in newton meters, ampere seconds or
kilowatt hours). It would never have occurred to me to omit the ‘in’ even in
Google.” I hadn’t thought of this. I suppose that’s the reason why
Wolfram interpreted my input as it did. But that didn’t make Wolfram’s answer
any more helpful. Surely anyone searching for “inch centimeter” or
“minute day” most likely wants to know how many centimeters are in an
inch or how many minutes make up a day.
Here on our site,
a commentator who signed his comment “Nate” wanted me to run the following queries. I did, and the results are in
parentheses.
What is the cheetah’s top speed? (Alpha didn’t know–but it offered
me a page with lots of cheetah data, which didn’t include speed.)
Are any two snowflakes alike? (Got nothing.)
What is the genetic sequence of the common fruit fly?
(Stumped. I tried the question with “drosophila,” but that didn’t help
any. A search for just “drosophila” gave me a definition.)
Where can I see The Soloist in Milwaukee? (Nope.)
How many copies of Harry Potter have been sold? (Nope. The
Wolfram people have told me that popular-culture data will come later. And the
version I have access to is not the latest one.)
What are the 100 biggest companies in the world? (Nothing, although when I
tried “biggest companies,” it interpreted it as “biggest
financial”–but then the computation timed out and it quit.)
How much larger than earth is jupiter? (This one it did fine. It asked me if I
meant “Jupiter, the Earth” and then gave me tables with tons of
comparative data, including the answer to that question.)
How far away is the sun? (Yes, it did fine–tons of data, including distance.)
How many solar systems are in the Milky Way? (It didn’t give me an answer.)
Another Technology Review commenter wanted me to ask,
“What is the population growth in France between 1980 and 2000?” (The
answer was quick: 0.419 percent; it said this was a 2005 estimate and gave
sources.) When I asked for the population in each of those years, as the
commenter suggested, I got the numbers, charts showing the increase in
population over time, and other data.
Going back to Slashdot, commenter “harlows monkeys” said, “You can’t meaningfully compare Google
and WolframAlpha, because what they are meant to do is so different.” I
disagree: while it’s true that Google primarily searches the Web, and Wolfram
Alpha primarily culls and calculates answers from databases, they are both meant
to answer your questions usefully. And they don’t have mutually exclusive
approaches. Google readily and usefully computes answers on common questions
such as metric conversions–and it recently launched a feature that culls
information from public databases, starting with census and labor data. And Wolfram
isn’t only coughing up numbers: it also gives you written definitions, and
Wikipedia links and source links. And it’s definitely meaningful to make direct
comparisons in instances where you are seeking a piece of data or a calculated
answer.
A commenter named “Jugalator”
slammed the article thusly: “Stupid ‘face off’ story. WA doesn’t
compete with Google.” That’s what I thought–until Google decided to make
its announcement of its own data-centric service during the very hour that Stephen Wolfram was giving his demo at Harvard last
week. If that wasn’t a competitive jab, it was at least a lunge for turf in an
expanding search frontier.