2012年9月21日 星期五

Herbert Simon (Wolfram|Alpha)


Well, no. The number-crunching comes courtesy of Wolfram|Alpha, a sort of search engine for quantifiable facts. Begun in 2009 by Stephen Wolfram, a British scientist and entrepreneur, the online service serves up answers to queries by harnessing information from its own databases. It can compute things like the distance between the Earth and the Moon on your parents' first Valentine dinner, for example. Its latest feature lets people analyse their Facebook account for free. Enumerating and plotting the vagaries of one's online life is at times surprising. Your correspondent wouldn't have thought he was many times more active in 2011 than this year, in terms of status updates, sharing links, photos, etc (chart below).

Input interpretation:

Basic information:

link to /input/?i=Herbert+Alexander+Simon+full+name&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Person.HerbertASimon.PersonProperty.FullName-link to /input/?i=Herbert+Alexander+Simon+date+of+birth&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Person.HerbertASimon.PersonProperty.BirthDate-link to /input/?i=June+15%2C+1916&lk=1link to /input/?i=96+years&lk=1link to /input/?i=Herbert+Alexander+Simon+place+of+birth&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Person.HerbertASimon.PersonProperty.BirthPlace-link to /input/?i=Milwaukee&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*City.*Milwaukee.Wisconsin.UnitedStates--link to /input/?i=Wisconsin&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*USState.Wisconsin-link to /input/?i=United+States&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Country.UnitedStates-link to /input/?i=United+States&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Country.UnitedStates-link to /input/?i=Herbert+Alexander+Simon+date+of+death&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Person.HerbertASimon.PersonProperty.DeathDate-link to /input/?i=February+9%2C+2001&lk=1link to /input/?i=84+years&lk=1link to /input/?i=11+years&lk=1link to /input/?i=Herbert+Alexander+Simon+place+of+death&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Person.HerbertASimon.PersonProperty.DeathPlace-link to /input/?i=Pittsburgh&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*City.*Pittsburgh.Pennsylvania.UnitedStates--link to /input/?i=Pennsylvania&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*USState.Pennsylvania-

Image:

Timeline:

Notable facts:

Nobel prize:

link to /input/?i=1978&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Math-link to /input/?i=United+States&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Country.UnitedStates-

Estimated net worth:

link to /input/?i=1.4+billion+US+dollars&lk=1link to /input/?i=2010&lk=1

Wikipedia page hits history:

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