R.I.P. Wolfram Alpha

The idea behind Wolfram Alpha was amazing!

Imagine a web site that understood natural language queries?

But the concept was even better than that. The site was powered by Mathematica software. Thus, the web site could perform all sorts of complex mathematical manipulations free of charge. What a God-send for my finance graduate students!

And it really worked... at first.

Yes, I know the name is lame... and the guy behind it is impressed with the sound of his own name. But still, the site was useful and had potential.

I came up with a demo page showing my graduate students how to calculate pertinent finance expressions, such as Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, etc., using Wolfram Alpha. It worked perfectly during 2009.

Then I started teaching the same course in 2010, and the calculations that worked perfectly in 2009 stopped working... at all.

The great search engine that was supposed to understand natural language queries fell dumb.

When, for example, presented with:

Solve n=-10000+2000/(1.1)^1+2000/(1.1)^2+4000/(1.1)^3+4000/(1.1)^4)+5000/(1.1)^5

(which worked perfectly in 2009, and returned the correct answer of n = +2312.99)

Wolfram Alpha now returns this great reply:

"Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure how to compute an answer from your input"

"Are you an expert on this topic? Find out how you can help."

Wolfram Alpha doesn't have a Customer Service point of contact that I could find, so you are expected to post your problem in their Online Forum, and hope that some other poor soul will solve your problem for you for free, so that your issue costs Wolfram Alpha nothing. Can you say "cheap"?

In any event, I posted my problem in the Forum, but, of course, nothing could be so simple. A question posted to the Forum must be "approved" by a nameless, faceless moderator somewhere. I guess that person didn't like my question, because it has never appeared in the Wolfram Alpha Forum.

So much for help!

And sadly, so much for Wolfram Alpha!

Actually, I must admit that I saw this type of problem coming. When the site first opened for business, I contacted various employees and suggested that they really did need help appealing to the higher education market. No interest was expressed whatsoever. So it doesn't really surprise me that no other professor I know uses or recommends Wolfram Alpha. Come to think of it, neither do I.

One thing does surprise me. Why a calculation that worked last year doesn't work this year is a bit of a mystery to me. Many times, web sites don't actually improve, but they usually continue to do the same things well. Unfortunately, this can't be said for Wolfram Alpha.

So... Rest In Peace once almighty Wolfram Alpha.

We hardly knew ya!