{"id":235,"date":"2009-06-03T21:02:50","date_gmt":"2009-06-03T21:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/?p=235"},"modified":"2009-06-03T21:03:31","modified_gmt":"2009-06-03T21:03:31","slug":"quantifying-everything-wolfram-alpha-and-algorithms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/?p=235","title":{"rendered":"Quantifying everything: Wolfram alpha and algorithms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wolfram Alpha<\/a> is pretty great:\u00a0 you type in a problem and it finds a solution.\u00a0 It does this by transforming the natural language problem into computational elements and entries in its curated data set, and then running the computations.\u00a0 Ta-Daa!\u00a0 The solution appears, provided that the problem includes elements that are 1. reducible to computation and 2. include elements that are in the database.\u00a0 Improving on 2. is easy enough, the argument goes:\u00a0 simply add more things into the database.\u00a0 If you want to calculate the likelihood that a word will occur in a Yeats poem, simply add more Yeats poems to the database and eventually you’ll get a meaningful result.<\/p>\n

It’s principle 1. that’s potentially more problematic.\u00a0 It raises the question about the extent to which all knowledge can be quantified.\u00a0 In other words, it doesn’t explain why<\/em> the repetition of words in a Yeats poem might be important.<\/p>\n

Ahh, you say.\u00a0 But that’s not science!\u00a0 True, science is about quantifiablity.\u00a0 But it is also about inquiry, about determining how to ask questions that are verifiable.\u00a0 And it is about applying those questions generatively in order to develop new knowledge.\u00a0 Wolfram Alpha’s founder has written<\/a> about a new kind of science, which is based on simple rules that can be embodied in computer programs. I’m ready to be convinced, but I’m concerned that the Age of the Algorithm could mean the end of the Age of Inquiry.<\/p>\n

My most memorable university exam included a question which asked me to differentiate special relativity from general relativity, and to explain how Einstein developed one from another.\u00a0 I attempted to get Wolfram Alpha to compute this, but the closest result I got was this<\/a>.\u00a0 So far, inquiry is safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wolfram Alpha is pretty great:\u00a0 you type in a problem and it finds a solution.\u00a0 It does this by transforming the natural language problem into computational elements and entries in its curated data set, and then running the computations.\u00a0 Ta-Daa!\u00a0 The solution appears, provided that the problem includes elements that are 1. reducible to computation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[10,19],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-musings","category-oii","tag-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pUfdR-3N","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonpowell.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}