How does Wolfram|Alpha convert a natural language input query to internal formula format?
Stephen Wolfram wrote a great blog post in January 2011 comparing IBM Watson with Wolfram|Alpha side by side, entitled “Jeopardy, IBM, and Wolfram|Alpha”.
http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2011/01/jeopardy-ibm-and-wolframalpha/
Apparently Wolfram|Alpha uses Stephen Wolfram’s own Mathematica software to supposedly compute symbolic representations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematica
I would welcome a more detailed explanation of just how this works myself! ;^)
I was able to find this Youku video of Stephen Wolfram’s brother Conrad Wolfram explaining symbolic computation in Mathematica.
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTA1Nzg4NzQ4.html