Wolfram Alpha is a website that allows easy access to a large amount of information. It has facts, data, and can be used to solve mathematical equations. For example, I can ask Wolfram Alpha for the “population of the united states”. After this is interpreted, I receive a page full of data and statistics. This page may seem familiar if you have ever asked Siri on the iPhone for statistics, this is where Apple pulls that information from.
You can also ask it computational questions, such as “vertex of y=2x^2+3x+7″. This gives me a lot of information about this parabola, graphing it on a cartesian plane as well as giving us what we asked for, the vertex.
Wolfram Alpha also has a pro subscription option that allows you to analyze different formats of data, and receive more information from your queries, however I do not have any experience with this. The free subscription has served me well for use with math. The free version does allow you a certain amount of uses of the “Step-by-step solution” button with a free account. This is very useful for figuring out how to solve problems and helping yourself learn.
