Wolfram Alpha integration for Lift

[Timothy Perrett]

Hey chaps,

Im going to start work on integration with the wolfram alpha engine
that i've of late become most obsessed with as its the coolest thing
since sliced bread... http://www.wolframalpha.com/

New branch here: http://github.com/dpp/liftweb/tree/wip-tim-wolframalpha

Anyone else in the commit team interested in working on this with me?

Cheers, Tim

[marius d.]

Wolfram Alpha is WAY COOL !

I wish I could help but my spare time is problematic. Maybe I could
help sporadically? Would you be ok with that?

Br's,
Marius

On Jun 11, 7:02 pm, Timothy Perrett <timo...@getintheloop.eu> wrote:
> Hey chaps,
>
> Im going to start work on integration with the wolfram alpha engine
> that i've of late become most obsessed with as its the coolest thing

> since sliced bread...http://www.wolframalpha.com/

[TylerWeir]

Sounds cool, I agree that there is much awesome in Alpha.

How do you see this integration planning out?

On Jun 11, 12:02 pm, Timothy Perrett <timo...@getintheloop.eu> wrote:
> Hey chaps,
>
> Im going to start work on integration with the wolfram alpha engine
> that i've of late become most obsessed with as its the coolest thing

> since sliced bread...http://www.wolframalpha.com/

[marius d.]

Oh and people that are not Lift committers could potentially
join? .... I'm sure there are lots of talents in Lift community.

Br's,
Marius

On Jun 11, 7:02 pm, Timothy Perrett <timo...@getintheloop.eu> wrote:
> Hey chaps,
>
> Im going to start work on integration with the wolfram alpha engine
> that i've of late become most obsessed with as its the coolest thing

> since sliced bread...http://www.wolframalpha.com/

[Timothy Perrett]

Hey Ty,

Essentially the wolfram API is a REST / XMLRPC hybrid, so my plan is
to model a scala abstraction around Apache HTTP (similar to the paypal
integration) - speaking of which, i might actually abstract some of
the common factories out of lift-paypal into lift-util if applicable.

The interesting challenge will be that with wolfram, it can return a
whole bunch of things, they could be graphs, text, sound - so i'll
need some abstract way of making that presentable - perhaps some
decoupled thing with a core communication group, then some lift
specific abstractions for hooking into bind() or something...

I've not figured it out yet in my head, so any thoughts are most
welcome.

Cheers, Tim

[Meredith Gregory]

Tim,

Could you enlighten me on the coolness of Wolfram Alpha? My initial forays and comparison to Google were depressingly unfavorable, but excellent if you're looking for some humor. See the summary below.

Best wishes,

--greg

My standard test of a search engine: polyadic pi-calculus
Google result: first hit is the Edinburgh tutorial prepared by Milner, still the best reference
Wolfram Alpha: "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. Related inputs to try: pi."

This test, by the way, should be right in W|A's sweet spot.

My next test: phred weasley
Google result: Did you mean: fred weasley and then several links to Harry Potter
W|A result: "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. Related inputs to try: Wesley."

My next test: fred weasley
Google result: the top Harry Potter sites
W|A result:

Interpreting "weasley" as "wesley"

---

---

Assuming Fred (female) | Use Fred (male) instead

---

---

---

Input interpretation:

---

---

Latest information for US births:

---

---

History for US births:Log scaleMore

Fraction:

--
L.G. Meredith
Managing Partner
Biosimilarity LLC
1219 NW 83rd St
Seattle, WA 98117

+1 206.650.3740

http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com

[Timothy Perrett]

Hey Greg,

Im not sure that drawing comparisons to google is right? IMO, they
dont do the same job...? I see why one would see similarities, but
isnt google's purpose to find the sources of information, where as
wolfram's aim is to provide an objective set of answers based on
"human" input;

http://www.wolframalpha.com/about.html

Cheers, Tim

On Jun 11, 7:14 pm, Meredith Gregory <lgreg.mered...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tim,
>
> Could you enlighten me on the coolness of Wolfram Alpha? My initial forays
> and comparison to Google were depressingly unfavorable, but excellent if
> you're looking for some humor. See the summary below.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> --greg
>
> My standard test of a search engine: polyadic pi-calculus
> Google result: first hit is the Edinburgh tutorial prepared by Milner, still
> the best reference

> Wolfram Alpha: "*Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.
> Related inputs to try: pi.*"

>
> This test, by the way, should be right in W|A's sweet spot.
>
> My next test: phred weasley

> Google result: Did you mean: *fred*
> weasley<http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en...>and

> then several links to Harry Potter

> W|A result: "*Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input. Related
> inputs to try: Wesley.*"

>
> My next test: fred weasley
> Google result: the top Harry Potter sites
> W|A result:
>
> Interpreting "weasley" as "wesley"

> ------------------------------
> ------------------------------

> Assuming Fred (female) | Use Fred

> (male)<javascript:applyAssumption(1,'*DPClash.GivenNameE.fred-_*FredUnitedS tatesMaleName-')>instead
> ------------------------------
> ------------------------------
> ------------------------------

> Input interpretation:[image: Fred (female given name) | Wesley (male given
> name)]

> ------------------------------
> ------------------------------

> Latest information for US births:[image: | Fred | Wesley\nrank | 985th
> (1929) | 194th (2008)\nfraction | 1 in 21277 people (0.0047%) (1929) | 1 in
> 1058 people (0.094%) (2008)\nnumber | 54 people per year (1929) | 2033
> people per year (2008)]

> ------------------------------
> ------------------------------

> History for US births:Log

> scale<javascript:asynchronousPod('pod.jsp?id=MSP41119646i0hb5a62fg000004fe2 11d660aid2aa&s=61',%20'0300','fred+weasley','',0)>
> More<javascript:asynchronousPod('pod.jsp?id=MSP41219646i0hb5a62fg0000058i05 06e54df6b4e&s=61',%20'0300','fred+weasley','',0)>

> Fraction:[image: Fraction]
>
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Timothy Perrett

> <timo...@getintheloop.eu>wrote:

[Meredith Gregory]

Tim,

Thanks for the response. i'll have to noodle on that one. Off the top of my head, i'm usually in this loop

• Initially, usually badly formulated question
• Get information sources
• Reformulate question
• Loop
  

So, i don't really see much difference between the two, except by use. i will think about it, though.

Best wishes,

--greg

[Jeremy Day]

I haven't played much with WolframAlpha, but I get the impression that it does better with quantitative results.  For instance, if you were inclined to compare the number of people in Chicago to the number of people in Alaska you might create a query like this:

http://www33.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+chicago+%2F+population+of+alaska

Jeremy

[Kris Nuttycombe]

I sort of see Wolfram Alpha as simply an incredibly sophisticated
calculator instead of an information discovery tool. What were you
trying to compute about polyadic pi-calculus?

Alpha seems to be trying to put all sorts of different kinds of data
into a common, hugely high-dimensional space so that you can perform
computations on it, where your computations are expressed in a mix of
mathematical and natural language. There are certainly a lot of things
that it's not useful for yet, but it's a tremendously interesting
problem.

Kris

[Meredith Gregory]

All,

Thanks for all this input. It certainly helps me see the value-prop better.

Best wishes,

--greg

[Timothy Perrett]

Greg,

If you have any thoughts on effective ways to model this query grammar
id be interested in your thoughts :-)

Cheers, Tim

On Jun 11, 10:38 pm, Meredith Gregory <lgreg.mered...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> All,
>
> Thanks for all this input. It certainly helps me see the value-prop better.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> --greg
>
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Kris Nuttycombe

> <kris.nuttyco...@gmail.com>wrote:

[Meredith Gregory]

Tim,

Thanks for the prompt. Can you point me to a description of what's possible with W|A? i can put together a draft that you can then rev.

Best wishes,

--greg

[Timothy Perrett]

Hey Greg,

Im not sure there is a description of exactly what is possible, but
this video is probally the best example i've seen of what it can do:
http://is.gd/10DWl

Furthermore, probably checkout the api documentation as thats
ultimately what we'll need to model - its a custom xml structure that
has to be able to handle various responses. http://www.wolframalpha.com/developers.html

What do you think?

Cheers, Tim

On Jun 13, 1:20 am, Meredith Gregory <lgreg.mered...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tim,
>