Wolfram Research was awarded The Best in Show and Technical Achievement awards @SXSW for its “answer” engine WolframAlpha. I have to say this is the coolest “answer” engine yet. I still remember the good ‘ol days when as a struggling math student I needed to do computations by hand. While it is certainly cool as a mathematical tool, and as someone who spend countless hours punching in equations into Matlab and Maple trying to get assignments turned in, or problems solved. I very much appreciate a tool like this. But the best part is that it does much more than mathematical computations. It can do simple things as weather, life expectancy in a country, maps, coordinates and even information about stocks, all accompanied by some statistical analysis – after all this is Wolfram Research. So after a few minutes of reading over the input language, I decided to give it a try. I first computed the eigenvalues of an upper triangular matrix, then the derivative of sin x, followed by the mass energy equivalence for a 90kg object, the life expectancy in the US and the stock information for Halliburton. Here are the result: Input:
eigenvalues+{{2,2,2,3},{0,i,2,6},{0,0,sqrt(2),1},{0,0,0,-sqrt(3)}}
Not only did I get the eigenvalues, but also the eigenvectors.
Input: derivative of sin x
Input: e=mc^2 
Input: life expectancy US 
Input: HAL stock 
As you can see this can possibly a very useful tool whether you are settling a bet, or trying to do research.
