Wolfram Alpha Pro Arrives Wednesday With Expanded Graphic, 3D and Data Analysis

The new version of Wolfram Alpha arrives Wednesday afternoon. Its formal name is Wolfram Alpha Pro, and Stephen Wolfram  calls “Step 2, the next step of what can be done with this approach,” which he describes as a “computational knowledge engine.”

Wolfram Alpha Pro is more than just the standard update that users of  Wolfram|Alpha expect every week. Each version includes countless changes—including regular data updates to hundreds of sources, improvements to our natural-language parser and other core frameworks, and completely new areas of coverage.


The Wolfram Alpha team has been busy lately introducing a unique spin on NFL statistics, consumer product comparison tools and they have extended popular mathematics functionality like “Show steps” to more and more domains, most recently differential equations.

In a preview for the New York Times, they reported that

The new version handles data and images. In a recent demonstration, Dr. Wolfram, using his computer mouse, dragged in a table of the gross domestic product figures for France for 1961 to 2010, and Wolfram Alpha produced on the Web page a color-coded bar chart, which could be downloaded in different document formats. He put in a table of campaign contributions to politicians over several years, and Wolfram Alpha generated a chart and brief summary, saying that House members received less on average than senators. 

Dr. Wolfram dragged in a 3-D image and after a few seconds it rendered the image — a guitar — and reported the number of polygons (2,253), among other characteristics.

According to the Wolfram Alpha Blog,

...the biggest change to Wolfram|Alpha since its launch nearly three years ago will be our next release, and we wanted you to be aware that it’s coming. We’re not going to let you know the details just yet, but what you’re going to find is a dramatic enhancement of functionality. You’ll be able to personalize your interaction with Wolfram|Alpha in ways that only our combination of algorithms, presentation tools, and data representation could make possible. 

You’ll still be able to use Wolfram|Alpha as you have in the past if you choose, but we think what we’ve put together represents the next big step in the evolution of computational knowledge, and one that will make Wolfram|Alpha an indispensable part of your online life.

Wolfram Alpha Pro will be a premium service and will cost $5 a month ($3 for students).