WolframAlpha ( ) is an answer engine developed by

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

. It is offered as an online service that answers factual queries by computing answers from externally sourced data.

History

Launch preparations for WolframAlpha began on May 15, 2009, at 7:00 pm CDT with a live broadcast 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 officially launched on May 18, 2009, receiving mixed reviews. The engine is based on Wolfram's earlier product

Wolfram Mathematica Wolfram (previously known as Mathematica and Wolfram Mathematica) is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allows machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network ...

, a technical computing platform. The coding is written in Wolfram Language, a general multi-paradigm programming language, and implemented in Mathematica. 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 work, reference resource produced by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The off ...

'', the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

, a Cornell University Library publication called ''All About Birds'', '' Chambers Biographical Dictionary'', Dow Jones, the ''

Catalogue of Life The Catalogue of Life (CoL) 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 Taxono ...

'', CrunchBase, Best Buy, and the FAA to answer queries. On February 8, 2012, WolframAlpha Pro was released, offering users additional features for a monthly subscription fee.

Usage

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

knowledge base In computer science, a knowledge base (KB) is a set of sentences, each sentence given in a knowledge representation language, with interfaces to tell new sentences and to ask questions about what is known, where either of these interfaces migh ...

of curated, structured data that come from other sites and books. It can respond to particularly phrased

natural language A natural language or ordinary language is a language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages ...

fact-based questions. It displays its "Input interpretation" of such a question, using standardized phrases. It can also parse mathematical symbolism and respond with numerical and statistical results. WolframAlpha was used to power some searches in the

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

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

Siri Siri ( , backronym: Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) is a digital assistant purchased, developed, and popularized by Apple Inc., which is included in the iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, Apple TV, audioOS, and visionOS operating sys ...

in October 2011 and Amazon Alexa in December 2018 for math and science queries. Users noticed that the Wolfram Integration for Siri was changed in June 2013 to use Bing to query certain results on iOS 7. Starting with iOS 17, it was reported that Wolfram for Siri no longer answers mathematical equations, instead defaulting to web search queries with no notable explanation. WolframAlpha , sets of curated information and formulas that assist in creating, categorization, and filling of spreadsheet information, became available in July 2020 within

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a ...

. The Microsoft-Wolfram partnership ended nearly two years later, in 2022, in favor of Microsoft Power Query data types. WolframAlpha functionality in

ended in June 2023.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 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