Wolfram Computation Meets Knowledge

Date Archive: 2015 February

Best of Blog

Find Waldo Faster

Martin Handford can spend weeks creating a single Where's Waldo puzzle hiding a tiny red and white striped character wearing Lennon glasses and a bobble hat among an ocean of cartoon figures that are immersed in amusing activities. Finding Waldo is the puzzle's objective, so hiding him well, perhaps, is even more challenging. Martin once said, "As I work my way through a picture, I add Wally when I come to what I feel is a good place to hide him." Aware of this, Ben Blatt from Slate magazine wondered if it's possible "to master Where's Waldo by mapping Handford's patterns?" Ben devised a simple trick to speed up a Waldo search. In a sense, it's the same observation that allowed Jon McLoone to write an algorithm that can beat a human in a Rock-Paper-Scissors game. As Jon puts it, "we can rely on the fact that humans are not very good at being random."
Education & Academic

Why Alan Turing Has Already Won, No Matter How The Imitation Game Does at the Oscars

When I was invited to join the Turing Centenary Advisory Committee in 2008 by Professor Barry Cooper to prepare for the Alan Turing Year in 2012, I would have never imagined that just a few years later, Turing's life and work would have gained sufficient public attention to become the subject of a Hollywood-style feature film, nor that said movie would go on to earn eight Oscar nominations.
Products

Q&A with Michael Tiller, Author of Modelica by Example

Modelica is the object-oriented modeling language used in SystemModeler to model components and systems. When I first learned Modelica, I read all books available about the language (there are not that many!) and found the book Introduction to Physical Modeling with Modelica by Michael Tiller to be the best out there. In 2012, when Michael started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of a Creative Commons licensed book about Modelica, I was the first person to back it, and Wolfram Research became one of the gold sponsors of the book. A new key feature in SystemModeler 4.0 is the full Modelica by Example book included in the product. This makes it much easier to get started learning Modelica. I had the opportunity to ask Michael a couple of questions about the new book and Modelica.
Products

Sweet Tweets: Valentine’s Day Tweet-a-Program Challenge

As Valentine's Day approaches, Wolfram is holding a Tweet-a-Program challenge. To help us celebrate the romantic holiday, tweet us your best Valentine-themed Wolfram Language code. As with our other challenges, we'll pin, retweet, and share your submissions with our followers—and we'll use the Wolfram Language to randomly select winning tweets, along with one or two of our favorites. If you’re a lucky winner, we’ll send you a Wolfram T-shirt! Submissions aren't limited to heart-themed programs, but check out these examples if you need a little inspiration: