WOLFRAM

News, Views & Insights

Recreational Computation

Computation & Analysis

What Are the Odds?

"What are the odds?" This phrase is often tossed around to point out seemingly coincidental occurrences, and it's normally intended as a rhetorical question. Most people won't even wager a guess; they know that the implied answer is usually "very slim." However, I always find myself fascinated by this question. I like to think about the events leading up to a situation and what sorts of unseen mechanisms might be at work. I interpret the question as a challenge, an exciting topic worthy of discussion. In some cases the odds may seem incalculable---and I'll admit it's not always easy. However, a quick investigation of the surrounding mathematics can give you a lot of insight. Hopefully after reading this post, you'll have a better answer the next time someone asks, "What are the odds?"
Brian Wood, Technical Communications & Outreach Manager
Computation & Analysis

Wolfram Community Highlights: Medicine, Drones, KenKen, and More!

With some impressive new features, new forums, and many new members, Wolfram Community has had a great year. As we approach the end of 2015, we wanted to share a few highlights from the last few months' excellent posts on the Wolfram Community site.

Drones

Interested in drones? Check out these posts. Connecting ROS to the Wolfram Language, Or Controlling a Parrot ArDrone 2.0 from Mathematica, by Loris Gliner, a student in aeronautical engineering. Loris Gliner used his time in the Wolfram mentorship program to work out how to connect the Wolfram Language to the Linux Robot Operating System. He includes code examples and a video showing the flight of a Parrot ArDrone 2.0 controlled via the Wolfram Language.
Kathryn Cramer, Technical Communications and Strategy Group
Computation & Analysis

The 2015 One-Liner Competition Winners

The One-Liner Competition has become a tradition at our annual Wolfram Technology Conference. It's an opportunity for some of the most talented Wolfram Language developers to show the world what amazing things can be done with a mere 128 characters of Wolfram Language code. More than any other programming language, the Wolfram Language gives you a wealth of sophisticated built-in algorithms that you can combine and recombine to do things you wouldn't think possible without reams of computer code. This year's One-Liner submissions showed the diversity of the language. There were news monitors, sonifications, file system indexers, web mappers, geographic mappers, anatomical visualizations, retro graphics, animations, hypnotic dynamic graphics, and web data miners... all implemented with 128 or fewer characters. The first of three honorable mentions went to Richard Gass for his New York Times Word Cloud. With 127 characters of Wolfram Language code, he builds a word cloud of topics on the current New York Times front page by pulling nouns out of the headlines:
Christopher Carlson, Senior User Interface Developer, User Interfaces
Computation & Analysis

The Coffee “Flavor-Rator”

I drink too much coffee---it's one of my few vices. Recently, my favorite espresso machine at the Wolfram Research headquarters in Champaign, Illinois, was replaced with a fancy new combination coffee and espresso maker. The coffee now comes in little pouches of various flavors, ranging from "light and smooth" to "dark and intense". There even is a "hot chocolate" pouch and a way to make cappuccinos using both a "froth" pouch and an "espresso" pouch. Here is a picture of the new coffee selection:
Arnoud Buzing, Director of Quality and Release Management
Computation & Analysis

Wolfram Language Artificial Intelligence: The Image Identification Project

“What is this a picture of?” Humans can usually answer such questions instantly, but in the past it’s always seemed out of reach for computers to do this. For nearly 40 years I’ve been sure computers would eventually get there—but I’ve wondered when. I’ve built systems that give computers all sorts of intelligence, much of […]

Stephen Wolfram
Computation & Analysis

Spring Planting, Autumn Harvest

Spring is here, finally, and everyone around here is tired of snow this year! Some of the hardier flowers are up already, such as daffodils and hyacinths. So, naturally, I started thinking about when I could put in the more delicate annuals, or even my tomatoes. I don't want them to be bitten by a late frost (we had one the other day!). And in the autumn, we want to know how late we can harvest before a frost might damage the produce. Well, I could consult The Old Farmer's Almanac for the last frost date, but how accurate is it for my specific locale? What about the variability? Might there be a trend to earlier dates due to global warming? To answer these questions, I need historical temperature data. The Wolfram Language has weather data available, so maybe I could do a little data mining and come up with our own planting chart, and you could for your town, too.
Robert Nachbar, Senior Project Director, Wolfram Solutions
Computation & Analysis

Instant Apps for the Apple Watch with the Wolfram Language

Note added 04/30/2018: Due to changes around Apple Watch and WatchKit, the Wolfram Cloud app does not currently support Apple Watch. The functionality described in this post remains available for other mobile devices. My goal with the Wolfram Language is to take programming to a new level. And over the past year we’ve been rolling […]

Stephen Wolfram
Computation & Analysis

A Rat Race, or a Great Way to Start the Day

Recently, during a particularly severe patch of winter weather and much too much shoveling of snow off my driveway, I decided, with help from the Wolfram Language, to bring back memories of fairer weather by looking at commuting to work on a bicycle. This past year, I finally succumbed to the increasingly common practice of recording personal activity data. Over the last few years, I’d noted that my rides had become shorter and easier as the season progressed, so I was mildly interested in verifying this improvement in personal fitness. Using nothing more than a smart phone and a suitable application, I recorded 27 rides between home and work, and then used the Wolfram Language to read, analyze, and visualize the results. Here is a Google Earth image showing my morning bike route covering a distance of a little under 11 miles, running from east to west.
Mariusz Jankowski, Algorithms R&D
Computation & Analysis

Build Your Own Weather Station in a Snap with the Wolfram Cloud!

Recently Stephen Wolfram announced the Wolfram Data Drop, which is a great new tool to upload any type of data from any type of device. I'll show how you can use the Wolfram Data Drop with a weather station you build using some basic hardware and a few lines of code. Once completed, your device will take temperature measurements every second for 60 seconds, and upload their average value to the Wolfram Data Drop every minute. This will give you 60 data points per hour and 1,440 data points per day. With this data you can use Wolfram Programming Cloud to understand how the temperature changes over time. You can find the exact times in a given day when the temperature was the highest or lowest, when the temperature changed the fastest, and maybe even use the data to make predictions! Can you beat your local weather station and make a prediction that is better?
Arnoud Buzing, Director of Quality and Release Management
Show More