32 Tricks You Can Do With Wolfram Alpha, The Most Useful Site In The History Of The Internet

Walter Hickey
Wolfram Alpha maths equation

Wolfram Alpha is probably the most useful site on the internet.

It’s not a search engine, it’s not an encyclopedia, and it’s not a calculator, but it’s a little bit of all of that. It’s really the only member of its field. 

Originally developed as an online version of Stephen Wolfram’s Mathematica software, its basic functionality is that of a maths equation solver.

Over the years, however, it’s grown substantially, and has really matured as a site to become one of the coolest and most informative sites online. 

Here are some of the coolest things you can do with it. 

1. You can find the nutrition facts for literally any food, as customised as you'd like it.

2. Use Wolfram Alpha to find out more than you ever wanted to know about why the weather is unbearable today.

3. The site makes travelling by plane a cinch.

4. Wolfram Alpha can also provide local movie showings. I tried to stump Wolfram Alpha by asking for information that nobody had ever asked for before, and it still worked.

5. Investors can also use Wolfram Alpha to compare and contrast company fundamentals.

That's not to mention stock returns, history and forecasts.

Planning investments with Wolfram Alpha is outstandingly easy.

6. You can also look at long-term energy price trends for all sorts of locations.

7. Same thing with gasoline prices.

8. In general you can also find out how Americans consume their energy.

9. You can connect Wolfram Alpha to your Facebook account to develop a chart of all your friends' connections.

10. You can compare the circulation of different periodicals.

11. You can also compare the various strengths of different networks.

12. Never again will you lose a bar bet over sports with Wolfram Alpha at your side.

13. Wolfram Alpha is great at working with probabilities.

14. The program can also help make you a poker star.

You can find the relative probabilities of various hands in poker too.

15. You can also use it to evaluate exact bets on other games of chance.

16. You can track the International Space Station — or any other satellite for that matter — in real time.

17. Here's what a stargazing New Yorker can expect to see when they look at the sky at 10 PM.

18. Or, if you really want to know what's going on up there, it can even tell you what the local weather is in space.

19. Know exactly what to expect when you go to the doctor.

20. Plug in heights and weights to find out all sorts of information about people.

21. You can plug in various bits of information to find out risks of developing diseases.

22. You can also plan exercise regimens.

23. If you're trying to figure out writing goals, you can find out how long it takes to write, read or speak a certain number of words. It'll also tell you an eventual page count, which is perfect for trying to nail down essay length for students.

24. You can generate awesome demographic charts with Wolfram Alpha too.

25. You can use the site for shopping and market research.

26. The geniuses behind Wolfram Alpha have developed a way to mathematically articulate certain images. For instance, here's a parametric curve of Barack Obama's signature.

Here's part of the mathematical equation that makes it.

27. You can find out how much a dollar from any point in history would be worth today.

You can also convert, say, 1950 dollars to 1995 dollars.

28. You can generate world heat maps based on data in the Wolfram Alpha database.

29. You can compare all sorts of man-made structures.

The site will tell you all sorts of cool information about them.

30. You can look at different congressional districts, including this paragon of Gerrymandering in Maryland.

31. You can learn about what the internet sees when they look at your computer.

32. You can settle old bets, and get actual answer to iconic questions like this one from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Or, this one from Empire Strikes Back.

The Facebook aspect might be the coolest.

A Magnificent Tool Will Show You How You Use Facebook Like You've Never Seen Before >

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