One of the greatest challenges with Wolfram|Alpha has always been understanding what the user is really asking, and there’s only so much that can be done within the confines of linear, text-based input.įor a long time, Wolfram|Alpha has had the remarkable ability to interpret multiple ways of textually describing math.
Sure, asking about the length of a particular bridge or age of a favorite actor doesn’t require any special notation, but mathematical questions frequently do. The primary goal of Wolfram|Alpha is “making the world’s knowledge computable,” and part of that is accessibility. This is not a straightforward process for everyone, though, and can become a real hindrance to a student’s educational success in math classes. Rather than having to write out “2 divided by 3,” we can simply write:įor students able to pick up notations quickly, interpreting them becomes second nature, and they are able to translate effectively from the textual/logical meaning and the formatted object on the page. These notations have been developed throughout the history of mathematics to make use of the two-dimensional space on the page to communicate more compactly ideas that become awkward or clunky when written linearly. There are the standard inline notations that use symbols like “+” and “÷”, but fairly quickly, the notation begins to break out of the standard linear form of written English.įor all the importance given to writing English in neat lines, math classes break from this mindset, introducing notation for ideas like fractions, exponents, square roots and eventually matrices, summation, derivatives, integrals and more. While not often a place for creating new mathematical notation, classrooms are usually where young people first begin interacting with the concept. We’ve mentioned the use of notation in the classroom and want to expand upon this idea. Please let us know when something unexpected happens.
As always, we still return an input pod at the top of the results, so check that to make sure that we’ve interpreted your input correctly.
In summary, it is easier than ever to enter your queries into Wolfram|Alpha and to verify that what you’re typing matches what you see on your homework or in your textbook.
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