One Inextricable Beam

We are All Reflections of the Same Light

Menu
  • Blog
  • No Matter Where You Go, There You Are
Menu

Wolfram Alpha is Stupid

Posted on 2012-02-07 by Leonard

I’ve seen a demo of Alpha by Wolfram.  It was impressive.  It shows how having specialized knowledge of sophisticated software can enable useful results.

On the other hand, after news today of their “pro” version coming out, I gave it another try.  Simple task: give me a plot of the average high and low temperatures in Denver through the year.  I was looking for climate data.  The NWS site gives it directly, in tabular form, though.  A plot would be nice.  So, I asked Alpha for each, in turn.  You can see that it gave me the same plot for both.  This is quite misleading.  Is it showing the actual temperature for the past year?  Why would the average high and low be the same?  On top of this confusion, there appear to be non-functional crosshairs in the actual site, which one would think would allow clicking in the page to get details.  Not on Safari.

Category: Stupidity, Technology

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The Tower

O may the moon and sunlight seem One inextricable beam,

For if I triumph I must make men mad.

–W.B. Yeats

Find me on Mastodon as @lsitongia@mstdn.social

Find me on Bluesky as @onebeam.us

© 2025 One Inextricable Beam | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme