Skip to main content

Wolfram is NOT Google

There I was going through a magazine. As I was flipping the pages, a complex looking image caught my eye. Underneath it was written: 

The much anticipated computing engine Wolfram Alpha will be officially launched on 18 May. 

Suddenly, it struck to me, ya its this new search engine they are talking about in the Internet. Hmm. Getting all excited I started googling it. Soon I was buried into reading blogs and reviews from the people. After an hour, I found out that its barely anything like Google, its not even a search engine. 

So what is it? They were calling it a computational knowledge. Wait a minute, how do you compute a knowledge. Knowledge is the facts and figures, and logical understanding of this universe and society that we have earned. How can it be calculated?  There were few facts I found interesting:

1. Wolfram does not have database of web pages like Google does.
2. Wolfram neither has the resources of knowledge like Wikipedia has.

So, on what basic does it calculate the knowledge. The answer was, the backbone of WolframAlpha - Mathematica and NKS (New Kind of Science). Well I have not used Mathematica but have been knowing about its existence since my engineering days. I was more familiar with the MATLAB instead. After seeing through couple of demos and more article. I somehow seemed to have grasped the idea of Computational Knowledge.

You see Mathematica is a huge resource of mathematical functions and thousands of models of our natural science. It has a tremendous implication in all fields of engineering and financial problem solving. So it seemed very natural that such resources could be used to calculate the factual knowledge. 

There was one example given in the article:

When you ask the distance between the moon and the earth, traditionally the answer would be searched from the vast resources of text people have put into the web. But here, it does nothing of such thing, instead it seems to have a mathematical equation which calculates the distance between the moon and earth and gives it to you. That sounds super cool. So all kinds of factual knowledge can be calculated. That is what I seem to have grasped of the new WolframAlpha.  

So instead of showing you the way to the answer, it gives you one. But only certain kinds of question is allowed. As I was making my understanding clear on this new buzz. I started getting goosebumps... Wait.. and it was not a fear but more of an excitement. I think I can tell what is it or share. 

Suddenly I realised that computation knowledge is something that InRev is also working on. Since the start of our company, we have been working in a way of bringing factual information to the people rather than a huge bulk of data. We want to answer people's question and let them make efficient decision. To clarify, the whole propose of F-Cube (our economic reporting portal) is to forecast the economic scenario to people in free. The only way to forecast is to compute what we know with the mathematical model of economy. That is computational knowledge, I grinned to myself. We also are working on creating a library of models to fit into the system. 

The philosophy seemed quite similar, add value to the data by providing relevant information. This is why I got to excited. Hope I was able to explain what computation knowledge is. Please provide your comments. I have to be sure of it :). 
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 16, 2009 at 12:57 PM

    Hate to be that guy, but you misspelled "Google" in your headline. Other than that - spot on!

    ReplyDelete
  2. jimpurdy1943@yahoo.comMay 16, 2009 at 1:06 PM

    Your links are interesting. You're working on some challenging stuff in Bangalore. Best wishes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. bexdeepMay 16, 2009 at 1:17 PM

    @anonymous. thanks. will change that. I trusted in spell checker :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. bexdeepMay 16, 2009 at 1:18 PM

    @SpooframAlpha thanks for the encouragement

    ReplyDelete
  5. sanmayaMay 18, 2009 at 1:12 AM

    Nice found yaar. Really superb. You gave a clear idea. The Wolfarm is really stunning. I think its a good beginning. we will find out more.

    They actually leveraged and marketed the stuff that google has putted in its godown. Google has a bit of it. But they never putted it in the front row.

    thanks

    ReplyDelete
  6. bexdeepMay 18, 2009 at 6:46 AM

    Hye Sanmaya Thanks yaar.
    lets see how things goes. I am egar to see how far it can go.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Good Ad Versus Bad Ad

At InRev , for past few days we have been working on our new project. The project is about collaborative blogging, from the blogger around the world. As Bhupendra and I have been blogging for long time, with his immense experience, our team has been working to revamp the globalthoughtz and create a new blogging experience. In this site, we are planning to add a section where people can add their advertisement. We thought lets start by our own :), with already so many products on the line, it was obvious. So there goes an effort to create a small 128 px by 128 px logo. If you are a designer, you know that designing is a very time consuming process. For hours, you just test around with colors. Remember there are 256 X 256 X 256 combination of colors!! Its hard job selecting one. Lets start with F-Cube : In short F-cube is a Free Economic Reporting Site. Let me exhibit some Ad made for it and its pros and cons. (Please don't click on the image. Wait till the end. Thank You) OK, h...
8 comments
Read more

Bruce Lee

Yes. Bruce Lee . Remember all the punches and kicks in his all time hits movies. But why am I talking about him. Am I going to talk about his movies? No, I am not. I am going to say about his philosophies which have been so many times projected in his fighting styles. By the way, he also wrote a book. Many may not know but he had a unique way of thinking about the life and his art of fighting. Let me put forwards his thinking, in my own words.   He believed in efficiency and rejected any amount of redundancy that affected the performance. He believed that there is no one style which is correct. Everyone has their own unique way and must harness those skills rather waste their time in doing something that is not efficient at all.  There are many fighting styles carrying their own norms and values. Every style starts by assuming something. But slowly those assumption are taken as a Gospel truth, and people make them into rules which cannot be broken. But, without understanding the key me...
5 comments
Read more

Being an Artist and Being an Entrepreneur is almost similar

Most people flock to big cities to pursue their dreams and struggle for years. Some people succeed but many still find themselves waiting for the opportunities. They consider that opportunity is the biggest thing that can actually leverage their talent or skill. But I believe that it is not always so. There are couple of examples that proves that opportunity along is not everything. Moreover in today’s media hyped world, opportunities are everywhere from a reality TV shows to your own youtube channel, twitter account or facebook profile. If you look around in youtube, there are lots of artists doing great with their skills and scaling them to offline. This gives a lot of encouragement to all those people who want to pursue their passion. But there is a reality beyond pursuing your dreams that everyone considers once in a while. It’s how far you can take yourself with what you have. Most people get stuck on it and lose their passion in mid way, and some people simply cannot go beyon...
4 comments
Read more