Comparison between Google and Wolfram Alpha

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Description of the Community
Wolfram Alpha
Strengths and limitations of Wolfram Alpha
Searching with Google and Wolfram Alpha
Goofram
Differences between Google and Wolfram Alpha
Conclusion and Recommendations
Works Cited

Introduction

The year 2011 marks the eleventh year in which the number of web pages passed the two billion mark (Glossbrenner & Glossbrenner ix). There are still many millions of web pages that are being created on a daily basis. The availability of many web pages creates a complex situation whereby one may find themselves wondering round and round from page to page without getting what they really desire to find.

However, and fortunately, this confusion has been reduced by the presence of search engines that act as excellent tools that help people to find what they exactly want. The best of them have been ranking consistently among the most popular sites on the internet.

Among these tools include Google and wolfram Alpha. Google is an online search engine that provides services such as internet search and cloud computing. It runs a numerous number of servers, processing a multiple number of requests. Other services offered by Google include translation into other languages and search within search services. Google also offers search engine calculators and Google maps. Google maps present satellite imagery of places a researcher wishes to know about.

On the other hand, Wolfram Alpha is an answer engine. It answers factual questions primarily by calculating the answer from structured data. Its different from search engines in that it does not provide a list of documents and web pages that may have the answer for the researcher.

Using Wolfram Alpha is quite easy in that a user submits the query and computation request in a textual format. Wolfram Alpha then computes and provides answers and the necessary visualizations. Wolfram Alpha therefore offers more specific answers by narrowing down the field of search into a more specific search results. This work reviews some of the differences and strengths and weaknesses, of Google as a search engine and Wolfram Alpha as an answer engine.

Description of the Community

For the purpose of comparison between Google and Wolfram Alpha, the medical community has been chosen to demystify some of the facts. Doctors help sick people get better and, they try to stop people from getting sick. People also go to doctors for check ups to be examined whether they are sick or not. Doctors also perform surgery whereby the body of a patient is cut open to fix an internal problem.

There are different kinds of doctors classified according to their areas of specialization. Paediatricians are those doctors that take care of sick children (Ready 9). Psychiatrists are doctors who deal with mental problems. Neonatologists are those who deal with infants, Nephrologists deal with kidney problems, dentists deal with the teeth, urologists deal with the bladder and, gastrologists deal with digestive problems. The above are just but a few examples of the different kinds of doctors.

Doctors are a part of the expansive industry of health workers who work in healthcare facilities. Hospitals need doctors together with other health workers in order for them to operate. Currently, doctors are still in short supply worldwide because of many challenges the industry faces.

The challenges include financial problems. This is because it is pretty costly to train doctors and nurses. Other factors that contribute to the shortage of doctors are the low enrolment of primary care students in medical schools especially in the United States. Health insurance policy is also a contributing factor that has seen many people avoid the hospitals because they cannot afford to pay the bills. There are also few doctors worldwide because of the enormous workload that causes burn out of workers.

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is an answer engine that does not offer several other documents that may contain the research in question. It gives direct and more specific answers. It can also be used to calculate mathematical equations.

Wolfram Alpha therefore gives the mathematical perspective, the visual perspective, the analytical perspective, and the graphical perspective of a particular research where necessary. It is worth noting here that Wolfram Alpha deals only with factual questions such as, who is the current Indian Prime Minister and not, what are the implications of the shortage of doctors in the Canadian society? (Levene 192).

Adults and children will find this answer engine not only useful but a lot of fun. A word, date, formula or phrase is entered in Wolfram Alpha, which computes the results for the researcher.

The engine can also compute the age of a person in years, months and days and notable events from the date of birth. The nutrition of a food type can also be displayed when one enters the name of the food type. The information of the source can also be obtained at the bottom of the screen. The chemical formula of a specific drug can also be displayed in Wolfram Alpha.

It must be noted here that Wolfram Alpha uses the strategic mode of request processing, data preparation, and searching and results presentation. These are the four inner blocks that Wolfram Alpha adopts in its search criteria. It differs from other search engines in results presentation.

For instance, Wolfram Alpha describes the meaning of a noun together with its pronunciation, synonyms and a set of narrower and broader terms. This method is much different from the other search engines like Powersets and Wikipedia although these two will not be discussed in this work.

Strengths and limitations of Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha has many qualities that can easily be compared with search engines like Wikipedia and Powerset along the same magnitudes of strengths. As it has been discussed already, Wolfram is precise in its presentation of answers and therefore, it gives more direct answers to the question asked.

The other advantage of Wolfram is that it can compute mathematical formula to give answers both graphically and textually where necessary. The strengths also include the ability to compute mathematical formulae, it answers questions directly rather than just giving links to information and, it tries to understand what the researcher wants thereby giving direct information (Differences between 4).

The limitations of Wolfram Alpha is that it is not relevant to shoppers, people who are looking for product reviews and, those who want to view comments on a particular topic. It is only for those people who want quick access to relevant factual information about a particular topical issue.

Thus, there are no advertisements of products for consumers to see (Usefultools 3). The medical community can therefore find it irrelevant to shop for drugs. A particular community can also not use this engine if they are looking for particular facilities, in terms of quality, from hospitals.

Searching with Google and Wolfram Alpha

This section discusses the way Google search engine, and Wolfram answer engine displays the results of the medical community. In this particular search Google displays many links to pages that have data related to the medical community. The pages include the Wikipedia, which interprets the phrase in several other descriptions.

The search also includes links to pages connected to exclusive medical practitioners and records of many phenomena in this field. Relevant pages are also displayed by Google, and they include online magazines that provide news bulletins within the medical community. Other terms described in the Google search engine related to this entry are community health, community based health, medical e-books, medicine, doctors, and the medical community credit union.

If one of the links is accessed, it shows the different kinds of problems that doctors experience in their field of practice. Another link to the search gives the kinds of doctors in the medical community. On this page, there is a comprehensive description of the kinds of doctors and their specialization. Specific examples include neurologists, gastrologists and, Neonatologists.

On the other hand, Wolfram Alpha gives a direct textual description of the medical community as the body of individuals who are qualified to practice medicine within their field of study. Wolfram Alpha also displays the synonym of the phrase medical community as medical profession.

It goes further and gives the broader terms of this phrase, one of them being the health profession. Further downwards, Wolfram Alpha provides the internet domains in which the phrase can be found. They are medicalcommunity.info, and medicalcommunity.org. There are no anagrams provided for this phrase because as the answer engine says, there are none among common words.

Wolfram Alpha also provides the options for synonym network and the mathematical form of the input phrase. Thus, as a way of comparison, Google is broader in its search method than Wolfram Alpha. It is worth noting that simultaneous search of Google and Wolfram has been enabled by another search engine that combines both the two engines to give simultaneous results. The new engine is called Goofram.

Goofram

Goofram is a search engine that combines both Google and wolfram results thereby giving a more comprehensive and direct answer. The results of the search in Goofram fit pretty well thus it looks like a natural application. Therefore, Google searches can be brought to Goofram depending on what one desires for their search results.

Goofram is also free to use and it does not demand one to sign up. It takes the results of Google and Wolfram searches, placing them side by side. This gives the researcher an opportunity to view a more direct answer and at the same time the chance to explore further into the search results.

A good example is when one desires to know the total population of Chile. As a matter of fact, this one is a more specific entry search. In the event of searching with Google, the results will be several links to pages that have data related to Chile.

Wolfram will give the exact population of Chile as per a particular year of census directly. However, Goofram gives the page results for both Google and Wolfram side by side with each other on the screen. Thus, in the two websites, one can find what they are after, and in both cases, a lot of irrelevant data that might be very interesting.

Goofram has been able to combine the two into a double-column search thereby giving two page results for a single entry. Google and Wolfram can also be defined as intelligence and knowledge respectively. This is because while the intelligent Google takes into considerations the many factors of algorithmic searches, the knowledgeable Wolfram, on the other hand, evaluates the keywords and crystallizes the data both mathematically and textually (Upstream connections 3).

Differences between Google and Wolfram Alpha

Google is a search engine that searches the web pages for the words that have been entered by a user. After one has entered the word they wish to search using Google, the results come in form of a set of links to pages that may have the information about the entry word or phrase.

The links are based on the relevance to the word or phrase. Wolfram Alpha, on the other hand endeavours to make sense of the entry word, phrase or mathematical formula thereafter providing the answer at its best according to its ability. Wolfram Alpha therefore, gives no direct link to other web pages but rather provides a small bar at the bottom of the page which may be the best link related to the search entry.

In results presentation, Google gives brief overviews of the different ways in which the subject of research is defined or explained in different sources. However, Wolfram Alpha gives the direct solution because it figures out the exact answer one is looking for.

For instance in the search for something like the area of Canada, Google gives the links where it found the words area and Canada thereby necessitating a further search for what one really wants. Wolfram Alpha, on the other hand comprehensively knows that one is looking for the total surface area of Canada, thereby giving the answer as 3.855 million mi ² (Differences between 2). This is actually the exact total surface area of Canada in square miles.

Thus in the quest for specific knowledge about something specific pertaining to the medical community, the practitioners concerned can use Wolfram Alpha to obtain the knowledge of the entry. A good example is when a doctor wants to research on the prevalence of a particular disease in a certain area of interest, for example cancer. While Google gives many options in the results page, Wolfram Alpha gives the specific data collected within a specific time period.

Wolfram Alpha can also solve algebraic equations, calculus and other equations of which it can offer even graphical answers. Mathematical questions are therefore solved when the questions are presented either in words or in equations. The ability of Wolfram to present plots and graphs of geometric formulae together with related information is beyond Googles scope. This is therefore very helpful to students and other researchers.

Conclusion and Recommendations

This discussion has demystified the differences between Google and Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha is an answer engine that does not offer several other documents that may contain the research in question. It gives direct and more specific answers. Wolfram is precise in its presentation of answers and therefore gives more direct answers to the question asked.

The other advantage of Wolfram is that it can compute mathematical formula to give answers both graphically and textually where necessary. Goofram is an engine that combines both Google and Wolfram and presents both of the engines side by side to each other in one screen. It is therefore recommended that medical practitioners should use Wolfram for more specific searches especially if they are studying something concerned with a specific health disorder.

Works Cited

Differences between. Differences between Google and Wolfram Alpha. Differences between. 2011. Web.

Glossbrenner, Alfred., & Glossbrenner, Emily. Search Engines for the World Wide Web. 3^rd Edition. Berkeley, California: Peachpit Press, 2001.

Levene, Mark. An Introduction to Search Engines and Web Navigation. 2^nd Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010.

Ready, Dee. Community Helpers: Doctors. Mankato, Minnesota: Capstone press. 1997.

Upstream connections. Goofram Combines Google and Wolfram Alpha. Upstream connections, 2009. Web.

Usefultools. Facts at Your Fingerprints. UsefulTools.com, 2009. Web.

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