Wolfram Alpha
is a new kind of "knowledge engine" that delivers factual answers. Wolfram Alpha is very different from what we
currently recognize as search engines. When a question or
request is entered into Wolfram Alpha, it doesn't return a list of related pages like Google
does, nor is it a database of information to be searched, like
Wikipedia.
Wolfram Alpha understands and then computes answers to certain
types of questions. It also computes relationships among things,
and generates relevant content to help bring about a deeper
understanding of the answer.
For example, if I enter “Dublin Ohio, Worthington Ohio,”
Wolfram Alpha tells me that all of Worthington’s population
resides in Franklin County, but Dublin’s is split among three
counties: 86.3% in Franklin, 13.6% in Delaware, and 0.1% in
Union. I learn that Dublin has 38,536 residents to Worthington’s
13,314, and a distance of 6 miles separates their geographic
centers. This seems like fairly mundane information, but you can
see how Wolfram Alpha could be used for more serious research,
which is what it is designed for.
In the video below, creator Stephen Wolfram demonstrates the
Alpha at Harvard.