Wolfram Alpha sucks

[benlehman]

Twice in the last day I've thought "oh, I have a question that's perfect for Wolfram Alpha, 'cause it's all analytical." Twice, it has totally failed me.

The first question was about net-grain exporting nations. It not only failed to answer my question, it didn't understand net, grain, export, or nation. Google answered my question with link #3.

The second question was about converting US print sizes to international print size. Again, nothing. Again, google answered my question relatively quickly.

This is the google killer? Altavista would be better.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

that's cool, does wikipedia show the imaginary part of the graph of f(x) = x^(-x)?

your ability to understand something (or lack thereof) does not define its value.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Uh, anonymous dude? How come you are google-searching "wolfram alpha sucks" to post flame-y comments on two year old livejournal posts? I seriously hope you are getting paid for this.

P.S If I wanted to know the imaginary part of x^(-x), I would graph it myself using any number of mathematical tools. Given that Wolfram Alpha was supposed to finish off Google (at the time of writing), its new goal of "somewhat shitty graphing calculator" is a big step down.