Wolfram Alpha can now analyze data you provide, so you can
do things like map out your e-mail relationships.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2012BY TOM SIMONITE Audio »
Shows like Numb3rs and CSI have popularized the idea of
experts solving problems using data analysis. Now the "knowledge
engine" Wolfram Alpha wants to help nonexperts try their hand at it.
Social graph: The premium version of Wolfram Alpha
automatically works out how to visualize data you provide, in this case mapping
connections in an e-mail archive.
Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram Alpha looks like a Web search engine but can answer
queries such as "how old is President Obama?" or "heart disease
risk 50-year-old male." New features launching Wednesday allow users of a
premium version to upload their own data to have Wolfram Alpha chart,
visualize, and analyze it. The tools could appeal to those who feel swamped by
spreadsheets, numbers, and lists, claims Stephen Wolfram, founder of the
company behind the site, Wolfram Research. The premium version will cost $4.99
a month, or $2.99 a month for students.
Wolfram Alpha Premium can recognize certain types of data
and even certain types of content inside a file. Uploading an archive from an
e-mail mailbox will produce a diagram showing the connections between different
senders (see image at top) or a chart showing your most frequent mail
recipients. If a spreadsheet contains country or city names, Wolfram Alpha will
automatically offer a shaded map (see page 2). It can even draw on its own data
sources to enhance that visualization with information on population, GDP, or
other factors. Users of the service can upload more than 60 different types of
data, ranging from audio files and video to 3-D models.
At a briefing yesterday, Wolfram said his site's new
capabilities will democratize the use of data analysis. "It's time to
reduce the threshold for people doing things with data," he said. "If
there's a question that can be answered by an expert using data that you have,
then you can [now] get it automatically."
Wolfram said he believed that many people who don't normally
tinker with data would do it if it were made easy enough. He drew an analogy
with the early days of Google's search engine. "People might have said,
there are very few reference librarians in the world, why on earth would there
be lots of people that want to find things on the Web? It became so easy to do
those queries that very many people did it, and the same thing is
Data map: Wolfram Alpha recognized that this data contained
country names, and automatically generated a map. It draws on external data to
make the shading proportionate to population, area, or other factors.
Wolfram Alpha
Lee Sherman, chief content officer at Visual.ly, a startup
working on an automatic data visualizer of its own, says there is no doubt that
there is a market for consumer-grade data tools. "The desire to visualize
data in smart ways may have started in the scientific and academic communities,
but it is now being applied in mainstream ways," he says, claiming that
infographics and visualizations are becoming more common on TV news and in
other media like the New York Times. That suggests consumers would be
interested in making their own, were it made easy enough, says Sherman.
"It's great that people like Wolfram Alpha are getting into this
space."
Wolfram Alpha launched in 2009 with claims that it would
transform how people got information on everything from calorie counts to
celebrity trivia, but it has barely changed most people's habit of using Google
to get all kinds of information. In response to a question from Technology
Review, Wolfram said that Wolfram Alpha is already profitable, though, mostly
thanks to deals like the one it struck with Apple to provide answers to Siri,
the virtual assistant built into the latest iPhone.
Wolfram hinted that the technology being launched this week
could lead to more such arrangements, but he didn't provide details. One
possibility would be to enhance traditional spreadsheet applications, such as
Microsoft's Excel. Giving such packages the ability to automatically analyze
data would be a powerful upgrade.
BY TOM SIMONITE
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