Stephen Wolfram does an AMA

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfram_mathematica_nks_wolframalpha

by instakill • 14 years ago

119 30 14 years ago

reddit.com

hinathan• 14 years ago

Seems to be an awful lot of asking and not a lot of answering.

binarycrusader• 14 years ago

Did you read the story? 3pm-5pm ET is when it happens.

denniedarko• 14 years ago

He stated he's going to be answering questions from 3pm to 5pm ET, so should start seeing some responses shortly.

kruhft• 14 years ago

Disappointing that the top voted 'questions' in these AMAs end up being scandalous statements and conjectures while the actual questions get pushed down to the bottom.

redschell• 14 years ago

I'm more disappointed in the "I'm an X major and I love you so much!" comments. I'd like more questions regarding Alpha pro. It's a tempting purchase for a lot of people, myself included, but so much of it seems like nifty stuff I'll play around with from time to time, but never actually use.

w-ll2• 14 years ago

That's my question, HattoriHanzo is my name on Reddit. I tried reaching him a year ago when that happened. But sadly, nothing came of it. It's not my fault everyone else wants to know :/ I still use and suggest other to use WA against my better judgement.

scott_s• 14 years ago

Looking at the Android app page, they may have gotten confused because the screenshot has WA in it. That is, it's using your app to input math symbols into WA. That may have triggered a simple policy of "issue takedown for anything that is not ours that has WA in it."

zackzackzack• 14 years ago

I will be interested to see if he answers any questions about reviews like this about ANKS: http://www.amazon.com/review/RUGSCP3XBNBUV/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?...

freyrs3• 14 years ago

From past experience at lectures, he tends to avoid questions about NKS. His magnum opus turned laughing stock is kind of a touchy subject.

cobrausn• 14 years ago

He does address NKS at least once, here: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfr...

Jun8• 14 years ago

I didn't know that Alpha can tell you what planes are currently visible overhead, holy crap, that's awesome!

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=planes%20above

Ran the query and looked at the sky like an idiot, only birds! And it's pretty clear today, too. Can the flight schedules be that off?

Also learned how many calories a cubic light-year of milk chocolate is: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfr...

DavidChouinard• 14 years ago

It can also do "satellites above": http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sattelites+above Make sure you enable interactivity (if you have Pro) on that last graph, it's pretty amazing.

larrywright• 14 years ago

You can do the same thing for satellites and stars (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=satellites+overhead)

You can answer a lot of cool questions with Alpha. Nutritional information for 1/2 an avacado? It can do that. Number of kilobytes in a petabyte? Yup.

Overall, very cool tool.

libraryatnight• 14 years ago

I use it occasionally for word finding, like a friend who wanted a clever .me domain I pointed to: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=words+ending+in+me

Also, you can use that same idea to cheat at Scrabble (or any variant), though I would never condone such a thing ;)

samstave• 14 years ago

Jesus, that needs to be a mobile app "Whats above [x] Planes, [x] Satellites [ ] Stars"

That's awesome!

BigTigger• 14 years ago

They exist for the iPhone, not sure about Android

mvkel• 14 years ago

Looks like he's getting preemptively skewered by the Redditerati.

CptCodeMonkey2• 14 years ago

I often wonder what kind of thought goes through a person's head before they do an IaMa on reddit. You need to be either crazy, stupid, crazy stupid, or Neil Degrasse Tyson to think "Hey this is gonna be awesome!"

redthrowaway2• 14 years ago

I disagree vehemently. The vast majority of AMAs by celebs go very, very well. There've been a few well-known trainwrecks (I'm looking at you, Woody Harrelson), but for the most part they're quite successful and a good way to engage with fans.

eggbrain• 14 years ago

Somewhat unrelated, but does anyone know the cost of the Wolfram Alpha API is after the free 2000 calls? No website seems to give the pricing (except for the old 2009 pricing scheme), and the Wolfram Alpha API site just says to contact them -- quite frustrating (yes I sent an email, but got no response)

clone1018• 14 years ago

I think it's dependent on the type of project you do, for instance a school's math program whatever might get charged less where a fortune 500's x project gets charged more.

ez77• 14 years ago

Interesting link provided by Wolfram, and funded by his company: http://www.computerbasedmath.org/

Stephen Wolfram does an AMA

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