Wolfram Computation Meets Knowledge

Date Archive: 2023 February

Education & Academic

Getting Hot and Spicy on the Scoville Scale with Wolfram Language

National Chili Day is February 23 and we’re celebrating the spicy heat that peppers bring to a great bowl of chili by exploring the "ScovilleRating" property in Wolfram Language. The Scoville scale ranks the spiciness (or pungency) of peppers by measuring the amount of the molecule capsaicin in a pepper and assigning it a number rating in Scoville heat units (SHUs). Pharmacist and chemist Wilbur Scoville introduced the “Scoville organoleptic test,” which eventually became the Scoville scale, in 1912. At the time, Mr. Scoville relied on human taste testers willing to do this challenging job. Today, scientists use high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to determine the precise amount of capsaicin in a pepper.
Computation & Analysis

Formation Flight with the Wolfram System Modeler Aircraft Library

Explore the contents of this article with a free Wolfram System Modeler trial. The Swedish Air Force has an annual tradition of greeting the people of Sweden at the end of the year by flying their fighter jets in a formation shaped like a Christmas tree. Besides welcoming everyone, this tradition plays a role as a valuable rehearsal for the fighter pilots in formation flying and is a way to show their presence. Thus, the large amounts of fuel burned by the fighter jets, which are most certainly not known for their fuel efficiency, may be excused in this tradition.

Current Events & History

What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?

That ChatGPT can automatically generate something that reads even superficially like human-written text is remarkable, and unexpected. But how does it do it? And why does it work? My purpose here is to give a rough outline of what’s going on inside ChatGPT—and then to explore why it is that it can do so well […]

Education & Academic

Develop a Growth Strategy for a SaaS Company with Wolfram System Modeler

Explore the contents of this article with a free Wolfram System Modeler trial. Have you ever watched Shark Tank or Dragons’ Den? Were you intrigued by the pitches of the founders? After the pitch, you might have heard the sharks or the dragons asking about the growth rate, profit or market size. What do those numbers say about a company? Are losses in the initial years always bad?

Announcements & Events

ChatGPT: The Real World Is Changing. How Should Education React?

Over the last few days, I’ve been asked how ChatGPT (particularly allied to Wolfram|Alpha) will affect education, how it relates to “computational literacy for all” and the computer-based mathematics education that my book The Math(s) Fix provides a blueprint for.

Wolfram is involved in Edtech in many other ways too; it will be great seeing how the full range of powerful integrations emerge that can deliver better education.