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Finding X in Espresso: Adventures in Computational Lexicology

When Does a Word Become a Word?

"A shot of expresso, please." "You mean 'espresso,' don't you?" A baffled customer, a smug barista---media is abuzz with one version or another of this story. But the real question is not whether "expresso" is a correct spelling, but rather how spellings evolve and enter dictionaries. Lexicographers do not directly decide that; the data does. Long and frequent usage may qualify a word for endorsement. Moreover, I believe the emergent proliferation of computational approaches can help to form an even deeper insight into the language. The tale of expresso is a thriller from a computational perspective.
Vitaliy Kaurov, Director of Community Engagement
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How to Win at Risk: Exact Probabilities

The classic board game Risk involves conquering the world by winning battles that are played out using dice. There are lots of places on the web where you can find out the odds of winning a battle given the number of armies that each player has. However, all the ones that I have seen do this by Monte Carlo simulation, and so are innately approximate. The Wolfram Language makes it so easy to work out the exact values that I couldn't resist calculating them once and for all.
Jon McLoone, Director, Technical Communication & Strategy
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What Is a Computational Essay?

A Powerful Way to Express Ideas People are used to producing prose—and sometimes pictures—to express themselves. But in the modern age of computation, something new has become possible that I’d like to call the computational essay. I’ve been working on building the technology to support computational essays for several decades, but it’s only very recently […]

Stephen Wolfram
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Notebooks in Your Pocket—Wolfram Player for iOS Is Now Shipping

Ten months ago, I announced the beginning of our open beta program for Wolfram Player for iOS. The beta is over, and we are now shipping Wolfram Player in the App Store. Wolfram Player for iOS joins Wolfram CDF Player on Windows, Mac and Linux as a free platform for sharing your notebook content with the world. Wolfram Player is the first native computational notebook experience ever on iOS. You can now take your notebooks with you and play them offline. Wolfram Player supports notebooks running interfaces backed by Version 11.1 of the Wolfram Language---an 11.2 release will come shortly. Wolfram Player includes the same kernel that you would find in any desktop or cloud release of the Wolfram Language.
John Fultz, Director of User Interface Technology
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Analyzing Social Networks of Colonial Boston Revolutionaries with the Wolfram Language

As the Fourth of July approaches, many in America will celebrate 241 years since the founders of the United States of America signed the Declaration of Independence, their very own disruptive, revolutionary startup. Prior to independence, colonists would celebrate the birth of the king. However, after the Revolutionary War broke out in April of 1775, some colonists began holding mock funerals of King George III. Additionally, bonfires, celebratory cannon and musket fire and parades were common, along with public readings of the Declaration of Independence. There was also rum. Today, we often celebrate with BBQ, fireworks and a host of other festivities. As an aspiring data nerd and a sociologist, I thought I would use the Wolfram Language to explore the Declaration of Independence using some basic natural language processing. Using metadata, I'll also explore a political network of colonists with particular attention paid to Paul Revere, using built-in Wolfram Language functions and network science to uncover some hidden truths about colonial Boston and its key players leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Swede White, Public Relations Manager
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Create a Tracker to Analyze Gas Mileage Using Wolfram Tech

When I first started driving in high school, I had to pay for my own gas. Since I was also saving for college, I had to be careful about my spending, so I started manually tracking how much I was paying for gas in a spreadsheet and calculating how much gas I was using. Whenever I filled my tank, I kept the receipts and wrote down how many miles I'd traveled and how many gallons I'd used. Every few weeks, I would manually enter all of this information into the spreadsheet and plot out the costs and the amount of fuel I had used. This process helped me both visualize how much money I was spending on fuel and manage my budget. Once I got to college, however, I got a more fuel-efficient car and my schedule got a lot busier, so I didn't have the time to track my fuel consumption like this anymore. Now I work at Wolfram Research and I'm still really busy, but the cool thing is that I can use our company technology to more easily accomplish my automotive assessments.
Andrew Steinacher, Lead Developer, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
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Launching the Wolfram Data Repository: Data Publishing that Really Works

After a Decade, It’s Finally Here! I’m pleased to announce that as of today, the Wolfram Data Repository is officially launched! It’s been a long road. I actually initiated the project a decade ago—but it’s only now, with all sorts of innovations in the Wolfram Language and its symbolic ways of representing data, as well […]

Stephen Wolfram
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