Website Rewiew: WolframAlpha.com Cina Catteau Editor-In-Chief COMMENTARY I don’t think anyone could claim that the Internet is not a valuable resource—its database is so extensive, in fact, that sometimes it becomes difficult to get clear, con-
cise information without digging through hundreds of over-complicated and irrelevant pages. There are many diverse services that the internet can offer, and finding the right website to give the right information is never an easy task. So we, as students, are left with several options. First,
we could do without the internet and live in blissful ignorance. Yeah, right. Second, the option that many of our numbers choose, we could slog through the sea of information on the web, hoping that what we are looking for will make its way into our searching hands. Or, the third op-
tion remains: we can use WolframAlpha. WolframAlpha, found at www.wolframalpha. com, is not a search engine-- it calls itself a “Computational Knowledge Engine”, which not only sounds more impressive but is much more effective. Instead of re-routing the user to
websites that might or might not contain the desired information, WolframAlpha just gives the information to you. All you have to do is know how to ask. The functions of this website are too many for me to name, but I will say that it can give you basic information about just about anything. If you’re in calculus, it can give you derivatives. If you’re in algebra, it will solve an equation or factor any number. It can balance chemical equations, define any word, calculate descriptive statistics, find out what genus a dog is in, see what happened on any date (and what phase of the moon there was), find out the median age in Finland, or convert units of weight or length. However, the site is hardly limited to academic functions. If you
want, you can encode text as a bar code or Morse code, play the A minor scale, find out your own IP address, or see who the artist of a song is. It can solve for missing words in a crossword and solve a cryptogram, and show you the yearly distribution of SAT scores. It’s an amazing resource that gives you direct information without endless searching. The only drawback of the site is that it’s a little difficult to figure out how to phrase your question to get the right feedback, but whenever you have trouble, there’s a helpful “examples” section of the site that shows how to phrase your input. It’s a website unlike any that I have ever come across, a site that combines many of the functions that make the internet the resource that it is.
Suicide Has a Powerful Impact on DHS Students CONTINUED FROM P1 When someone commits suicide, the people around them are affected in one way or another, even if they didn’t know the person personally. I know that Grant’s death has me thinking about the way I treat my siblings and about the people I pass by everyday that might want to end their lives. If everyone would take into consideration the consequences of making someone feel left out, then maybe suicide could be totally prevented. Family is not to blame in the case of Grant’s death, or
in many suicidal cases in the world, but certainly school life plays a major role in putting suicidal thoughts into the minds of individuals. There are many other ways to handle grief besides suicide. If there is one reader that is thinking about suicide, just know that time can heal wounds, and death is certainly not more desirable than waiting for something better to happen. Most things are never as bad as they seem to be. Never be afraid to go to www.suicidehotlines.com for more information.
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