Instead, I routinely found myself using free-form linguistics as an integral part of longer computations-randomly interspersing Mathematica syntax and free-form linguistics on different lines in a Mathematica session, and just using whichever was most convenient for a particular input.Īnd here’s an exciting part: in Mathematica 8 the free-form linguistics doesn’t just operate line-by-line. Sometimes it’s to pick up the standard Mathematica name of some data object, like a city or a country or a chemical.Īnd sometimes it’s just faster to enter sloppy free-form linguistics for something I want to do, and let Wolfram|Alpha figure out a reasonable choice of details to fill in.Īt first, I thought one might mostly just use free-form linguistics for one-shot computations: a little like just having access to the Wolfram|Alpha website from inside Mathematica.īut what I quickly realized (after a very long and difficult process of designing the underlying functionality, I might add) is that that’s not correct. Sometimes it’s because I can’t quite remember how some particular Mathematica function works in some area that I don’t use very often. But I’ve been surprised to see that in all sorts of cases, I’m choosing to use free-form linguistic input.
I consider myself a very expert user of Mathematica, and I know the Mathematica language very well. And sometimes you’ll choose to enter your input in that sometimes you’ll want to just use free-form linguistics. You can just start typing, however you think about things, and Mathematica should automatically be able to understand you.īy watching what it does, you’ll probably pretty soon get the hang of Mathematica‘s own native language. Yet one can build things up with the precision and structure of Mathematica.įor Mathematica beginners, free-form linguistic input has an obvious and dramatic effect. One has the freedom and breadth of expression of Wolfram|Alpha. The exciting thing that’s now happened with Mathematica 8 is that these very different approaches have been brought together-to produce the best of both worlds. Mathematica requires you to use its precise formal language, but lets you build up programs and computations of arbitrary complexity. Wolfram|Alpha takes free-form linguistic input, and lets you make quick, single, queries.
In their native forms, Wolfram|Alpha and Mathematica operate in very different ways. But what happens is that Mathematica calls on Wolfram|Alpha to try to interpret your input, and turn it into precise Mathematica code.
You can type things in just the way you think about them, in free-form English. You don’t have to use precise Mathematica syntax. Then what follows is taken as free-form linguistic input. And with Mathematica 8, the powerful methods of Wolfram|Alpha become available within the Mathematica environment.Īll one has to do is to type an = at the beginning of a line. Wolfram|Alpha has pioneered the concept of specifying computations with free-form linguistic input. With the release of Mathematica 8 today, the single most dramatic change is that you don’t have to communicate with Mathematica in the Mathematica language any more: you can just use free-form English instead.
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