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by varenc 1681 days ago
Of course if you try the query with spheres you see Wolfram Alpha's typical catatrophic failure.

I love WA and use it all the time, but it's so hard to know when a query will work and when it won't. When it fails it fails hilariously.

Here's some of my favorite queries:

- https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2.2+bagels%2Fday+*+ave...

- https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=time+dilation+given+v+...

- https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=400+miles+%2F+20mpg+*+...

- https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+unemployment+rate+v...

- https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=warp+speed+6+in+deep+s...

1 comments

For most of these, Wolfram Vertical Line Alpha seems to give reasonable results. However, for the third one, because I'm in Argentina, it helpfully converts US$79.80 into Argentine pesos, getting an answer that's off by about a factor of 2: AR$7969.44. As https://preciodolarblue.com.ar/ explains, the current bid and ask prices for the dollar are AR$195 and AR$199. Wolfram Vertical Line Alpha is apparently using the "official" rate of AR$99.45 or so; this is the rate at which the government converts your dollars into pesos if you are an exporter, but you cannot convert your pesos into dollars at this rate without special permission, granted, for example, if you are going on vacation to Disney World.