Wolfram|Alpha Knows Your DNA March 17, 2010

I’ve written about Wolfram Alpha several times, I really like it and think it saves me plenty of time while searching online.

I use WolframAlpha because sometimes (if I know exactly what I want to find) it saves me plenty of time and clicks. If I want to calculate BMI, Google lists me several calculators. WolframAlpha calculates it itself. If I want to find information very fast about a clinical marker, Google gives me resources, WA gives me the best answer in one click. I also use it for ICD classification, as it’s more easily accessible than Wikipedia; for epidemiological data and other calculations.

To sum it up, I think WolframAlpha is for those who perfectly know what they want to find and want to save time and clicks. For other search queries, Google is still the best.

Just to show you how useful it is in genetics and molecular biology, here are a few examples:

Information on a gene:

Comparison between genes

SNP analysis

Chromosomes and many more. See this blog entry for more details.

Further reading:

• WolframAlpha Community: Medicine and Health
• Medical Test Data on Wolfram|Alpha