Tuesday, March 13, 2012

WolframAlpha is interesting, but occasionally farts

I was using WolframAlpha recently as a graphing calculator. For those of you who don't know, WolframAlpha is a remarkable site that serves as a graphing calculator, computational tool, and aggregator of information. You can do a search for lots of things - not all technical in nature.

It is generally reliable, although I did run into a problem in which it returned only one of two correct roots (a quadratic involving sixth roots, or something like that; unfortunately, I didn't save the output.)

I was once curious about the demographic trends between Brians and Ryans in America. To my delight, it appears Ryan will soon become the dominant name in America.


Maybe Brians will have their names mangled, for a change.

But, occasionally, the outputs are really weird.

I'm not sure how I got this output - maybe I accidentally clicked on something. Maybe the book I was reading at the time somehow bumped the right set of keys. But I ended up with this.



Contrasts it with a query involving an actual celestial object.


I think God is telling me to get in touch with my roots. Either that, or Sanrio and WolframAlpha are engaged in a massive conspiracy to take over the United States using kawaii pilots.

70 years is still too soon. Who in the world thought this was a good idea? 

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