Wolfram Alpha
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Type of site
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Answer engine |
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| Owner | Wolfram Alpha LLC |
| Created by | Wolfram Research |
| Slogan(s) | Making the world’s knowledge computable. |
| Website |
www |
| Alexa rank |
 2,339 (February 2017[update]) |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | May 18, 2009 (official launch) May 15, 2009 (public launch) |
| Current status | Active |
| Written in | Wolfram Language |
Wolfram Alpha (also styled WolframAlpha and Wolfram|Alpha) is a computational knowledge engine or answer engine developed by Wolfram Research, which was founded by Stephen Wolfram. It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from externally sourced "curated data", rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might.
Wolfram Alpha, which was released on May 18, 2009, is based on Wolfram's earlier flagship product Wolfram Mathematica, a computational platform or toolkit that encompasses computer algebra, symbolic and numerical computation, visualization, and statistics capabilities. Additional data is gathered from both academic and commercial websites such as the CIA's The World Factbook, the United States Geological Survey, a Cornell University Library publication called All About Birds, Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Dow Jones, the Catalogue of Life,CrunchBase,Best Buy, the FAA and optionally a user's Facebook account.
Users submit queries and computation requests via a text field. Wolfram Alpha then computes answers and relevant visualizations from a knowledge base of curated, structured data that come from other sites and books. The site "use[s] a portfolio of automated and manual methods, including statistics, visualization, source cross-checking, and expert review." The curated data makes Alpha different from semantic search engines, which index a large number of answers and then try to match the question to one.
Wolfram Alpha can only provide robust query results based on computational facts, not queries on the social sciences, cultural studies or even many questions about history where responses require more subtlety and complexity. It is able to respond to particularly-phrased natural language fact-based questions such as "Where was Mary Robinson born?" or more complex questions such as "How old was Queen Elizabeth II in 1974?" It displays its "Input interpretation" of such a question, using standardized phrases such as "age | of Queen Elizabeth II (royalty) | in 1974", the answer of which is "Age at start of 1974: 47 years", and a biography link. Wolfram Alpha does not answer queries which require a narrative response such as "What is the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars?" but will answer factual or computational questions such as "June 1 in Julian calendar".
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