Wolfram Alpha – not a “homework killer”, but something to watch
If you read technology news, or even the Chronicle of Higher Education, you may have heard of Wolfram Alpha, a free online tool that is somewhere between a search engine, a database, and a computer algebra system. The launch of Wolfram Alpha in mid-May of this year was met with much fanfare in certain circles, and much consternation in others. Some educators fear that this tool will allow students to skip the learning process of working out problems by hand, since they can get the results online. (Whether or not this would constitute cheating is a topic for a different post.)
I decided to wait before posting about this tool until it had a few months to mature, and until I had time to really kick the tires. Now that I’ve done that, I agree that it can be a powerful tool and that faculty in certain fields should be aware that it exists, but I don’t think that it’s going to make homework obsolete.
Since Wolfram Alpha is based on the computation engine of Mathematica, that’s where it does best. If you enter “integrate x sin^2 x dx”, you get
But a link also appears to “show steps”, which explains each of the steps in the solution, essentially doing the students’ homework for them. This isn’t really new, since sites like http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ have offered step-by-step solutions for some time, so people who teach courses that assign these types of problems are probably already aware of these resources and take them into account in their teaching. But so far, mathematical problems are the only type of input that results in a solution with steps, so instructors in other fields need not worry.
On the other hand, Wolfram Alpha employs a wide variety of data sets, so if an instructor thinks that an assignment will send students to the library or to a particular electronic resource where they’ll have to hunt for information and interpret it, they may be surprised. For example, how did the Consumer Price Index change between June 2008 and June 2009? Just enter “consumer price index june 2009 / consumer price index june 2008″ and you get the result: 98.57%, or a drop of 1.43%. And if you have a large data set, Wolfram Alpha will curate it for you – see http://www.wolframalpha.com/participate/structureddata.html
There are a million other things that Wolfram Alpha can do, too, like:
- balancing a chemical equation: enter “C3H8 + O2 —> H2O + CO2″ and you’ll get
You’ll get the result, but you won’t get the steps required to get there, so students can check their results but it won’t do the work for them if the assignment requires that you “show your work”. - calculating the nutritional value of my favorite smoothie recipe (which makes 2 servings): enter “calories in 1 banana + 3.5 cups strawberries + 0.5 cup milk + 0.5 cup orange juice + 3 teaspoons sugar + 1 teaspoon lemon juice” and you get the full nutrition information in a format that looks very similar to the panel on all packaged food products. You also get a place to choose what type of milk you want to use and to make other ingredient choices.
I’ve used Wolfram’s Mathematica software for more than 10 years now, and I’m very interested in the ways in which it might make a positive contribution to engaging students with course material. If you’d like to talk about ways that you might use it in your course, please contact me!
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Comments
Now Wolfram Alpha is hosting a “Homework Day” on 10/21/09 – http://homeworkday.wolframalpha.com/
promising to convene “students and educators from across the country to solve your toughest assignments and explore the power of using Wolfram|Alpha for school, college, and beyond.”
Elizabeth, This is pretty amazing and I would never have found it without your blogpost. Thanks for the examples especially.