Wolfram Mathematica

Now I know when Microsoft 365 Copilot rolls out, this might be a little bit redundant, but it is cool to know you can output directly into PowerPoint the visualizations and analysis from Code Interpreter.

Now onto mathematics and many people pointed out that I didn't fully test out Wolfram to give it a fair shot.

So I tested both Code Interpreter and Wolfram on differential equations and they both got it right.

Interestingly though, they gave you a link for the step-by-step solutions because this is a paid option on the Wolfram website.

But I did find some other differences between them and honestly it favored Code Interpreter.

So here is a really challenging mathematics question.

and Wolfram can't get it right.

It says that the answer is 40%, even though that's not one of the options.

Wolfram appears as add computation and knowledge.

Symbolic computation, curated knowledge, formal math inside chat from the team behind Wolfram, Alpha, and Mathematica.

Consensus retrieves papers from an indexed academic corpus, generates a synthesis, and then shows you a consensus meter, which is a little readout of how much the retrieved papers agree with each other.

other.That meter is the interesting design choice.

Wolfram and Chat is the first kind.

Wolfram is a real accessibility win.

Natural language into symbolic computation means a biologist who never learned Mathematica syntax can get a symbolic answer.

That's useful, and it isn't a new capability.

He created, um, like, a...

I think it was Mathematica or something like, too.

So he's super smart He did a YouTube impulsive post two ago where he's in the same camp.

He's like, "Yeah, these machines will generate lots of stuff, but they don't actually understand." But he never articulates what this magic understanding is or why the humans are something so special.

Maybe we should just delegate it to more and more powerful AIs." Well, I must admit that I'm getting a bit impatient with some of what's being said because it seems to me too often to involve sort of fundamental misunderstandings of what math is really about and also, frankly, what AI is about.

Perhaps I personally have a unique piece of history that informs this, because after all, back in 1988 when we first introduced Mathematica, there were also some of the same kinds of talk about math being taken over by, uh, uh, and made pointless.

Of course, that's not how it worked out at all.

Instead, Mathematica, now Wolfram Language, just raised the level of math that can be done, and over the years has led to all sorts of important new math.

If working out symbolic integrals was what one thinks doing math is really about, then yes, Mathematica has essentially replaced it.

But while that kind of problem-solving is what's needed in many applications of math, it's not the core of what math itself in its pure form is about.

The enterprise of pure mathematics is an old one, crucially entwined with the history of civilization.

Uh, Dr.

So we bundled a full function SQL database with every machine.

We bundled Mathematica, Richard Wolfram's technology, with every machine.

We bundled Shakespeare.

You know, I mean, we bundled all kinds of things with every machine so that there would be a kernel of ideation and capability in these machines that other people could extrapolate and build on.

Actually, before ChatGPT ever came out.

If I wanted to solve a math equation, there's a program called Mathematica.

Stephen Wolfram.

Exactly.

Yeah, so Python was my language of choice.

It was, when I started in undergrad, I think I was using, like, Mathematica and then, like, MATLAB and some other, like, random language.

Languages like that.

But in my PhD program, the first programming language that I, like, really... like used rigorously or whatnot was in an astronomical data analysis course, which is where they taught Python.