WolframAlpha ( ) is an

answer engine Question answering (QA) is a computer science discipline within the fields of information retrieval and natural language processing (NLP), which is concerned with building systems that automatically answer questions posed by humans in a natural ...

developed by

Wolfram Research Wolfram Research, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. Other products include ...

. It answers factual queries by computing answers from externally sourced data. WolframAlpha was released on May 18, 2009 and is based on Wolfram's earlier product

Wolfram Mathematica Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimizat ...

, a technical computing platform. WolframAlpha gathers data from academic and commercial websites such as the CIA's ''

The World Factbook ''The World Factbook'', also known as the ''CIA World Factbook'', is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official print version is availabl ...

'', the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

, a Cornell University Library publication called ''All About Birds'', ''

Chambers Biographical Dictionary ''Chambers Biographical Dictionary'' provides concise descriptions of over 18,000 notable figures from Britain and the rest of the world. It was first published in 1897. The publishers, Chambers Harrap, who were formerly based in Edinburgh, clai ...

'', Dow Jones, the ''

Catalogue of Life The Catalogue of Life is an online database that provides an index of known species of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms. It was created in 2001 as a partnership between the global Species 2000 and the American Integrated Taxonomic I ...

'', CrunchBase, Best Buy, and the

FAA The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

to answer queries. A Spanish version was launched in 2022.

Technology

Overview

Users submit queries and computation requests via a text field. WolframAlpha then computes answers and relevant visualizations from a

knowledge base A knowledge base (KB) is a technology used to store complex structured and unstructured information used by a computer system. The initial use of the term was in connection with expert systems, which were the first knowledge-based systems. ...

of curated,

structured data A data model is an abstract model that organizes elements of data and standardizes how they relate to one another and to the properties of real-world entities. For instance, a data model may specify that the data element representing a car be c ...

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

WolframAlpha is written in the

Wolfram Language The Wolfram Language ( ) is a general multi-paradigm programming language developed by Wolfram Research. It emphasizes symbolic computation, functional programming, and rule-based programming and can employ arbitrary structures and data. It ...

, a general multi-paradigm programming language, and implemented in Mathematica, that is proprietary and not commonly used by developers.

Usage

WolframAlpha was used to power some searches in the

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...

and

DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo (DDG) is an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo does not show search results from content farms. It uses various APIs o ...

search engines but is no longer used to provide search results. For factual question answering, WolframAlpha was formerly used by Apple's

Siri Siri ( ) is a virtual assistant that is part of Apple Inc.'s iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, tvOS, and audioOS operating systems. It uses voice queries, gesture based control, focus-tracking and a natural-language user interface to answer qu ...

and

Amazon Alexa Amazon Alexa, also known simply as Alexa, is a virtual assistant technology largely based on a Polish speech synthesiser named Ivona, bought by Amazon in 2013. It was first used in the Amazon Echo smart speaker and the Echo Dot, Echo Studio ...

for math and science queries but is no longer operational within those services. WolframAlpha data types became available beginning in July 2020 with

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for App ...

, but the Microsoft-Wolfram partnership ended nearly two years later, in 2022, in favor of Microsoft

Power Query Power Query is an ETL tool created by Microsoft for data extraction, loading and transformation, and is used to retrieve data from sources, process it, and load them into one or more target systems. Power Query is available in several variation ...

data types. WolframAlpha functionality in Microsoft Excel will be over in June 2023.

History

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, receiving mixed reviews. In 2009, Wolfram Alpha advocates pointed to its potential, some even stating that how it determines results is more important than current usefulness. WolframAlpha was initially launched as free, but later WolframAlpha attempted monetizing the service by launching an

iOS application The App Store is an app store platform, developed and maintained by Apple Inc., for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS Software Dev ...

with a cost of $50, while the website itself was free. That plan was abandoned after criticism. On February 8, 2012, WolframAlpha Pro was released, offering users additional features for a monthly subscription fee. 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.

Copyright claims

InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (abbreviated IW) is an information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a web-only publication. Its parent company today is International Data Group, and its siste ...

'' published an article warning readers of the potential implications of giving an automated website proprietary rights to the data it generates.

Free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

advocate

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

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.

References

External links

* {{Intelligent personal assistant software Agent-based software Educational math software Information retrieval systems Internet properties established in 2009 Mathematics education Natural language processing software Open educational resources Physics education Semantic Web Software calculators Virtual assistants Web analytics Websites which mirror Wikipedia Wolfram Research Computer algebra systems