In other words, bing now has some calculation abilities. MS is running an ad with this particular calculation suggested as a Bing search and a background photo of a blackboard.
Well, as you see, it works. And (I presume) they would like you think about the fact that throwing the same equation at Google does nothing useful (inexplicably, the first result was a page about BSD).
But I wonder how many users of this feature will be familiar with the rules of operator precedence? I admit I read it as:
x-3
--- = ... << I can't format it right but you get the idea
x-1
After testing it with Google, I went to Alpha, which (unsurprisingly) handled it with aplomb, giving it to me with proper notation as well and making me aware of my mistake. So I tried it as (x-3) / (x-1) = (x-4) / (x-5), which Alpha also handled with Aplomb (11/3 if you are lazy).
However, inputing the latter into Bing (without or without spaces for padding) gave no calculation or result, but just a bunch of (mostly unrelated) search results. Seems rather counter-productive on MS's part.
Oh dear, I hope that's a joke :-/ Maybe I should have done it as a 'tell HN' type post. I thought people would be interested in the depth of the parsing tree.
FWIW: http://www.numberempire.com/equationsolver.php says -1/4. It will only give 11/3 if you explicitly put parentheses: (x-3)/(x-1)=(x-4)/(x-5) . So I believe Bing's result is correct. Based on elementary school order of operations, the implied parentheses on the original equation are: x - (3/x) - 1 = x - (4/x) - 5.
Are you outside the USA? I'm in Taiwan and Bing isn't calculating it for me either. It's just returning a bunch of normal search results in Chinese. Maybe calculation only works for queries coming from inside the USA.
It's yet another real world question that's come up in conversation that I've wanted to know the answer to, and which Wolfram Alpha would be really awesome if it could handle, but sadly cannot.
An interesting, apparently unintentional, side effect is the exercise in the precedence rules.
Search engines (bing, google, wolfram) get the precedence but are finicky about calculations. Humans (presumable anyway, from the earlier comments) do the calculations but sometimes overlook the precedences. I think it is rather funny.
Well, as you see, it works. And (I presume) they would like you think about the fact that throwing the same equation at Google does nothing useful (inexplicably, the first result was a page about BSD).
But I wonder how many users of this feature will be familiar with the rules of operator precedence? I admit I read it as:
x-3
--- = ... << I can't format it right but you get the idea
x-1
After testing it with Google, I went to Alpha, which (unsurprisingly) handled it with aplomb, giving it to me with proper notation as well and making me aware of my mistake. So I tried it as (x-3) / (x-1) = (x-4) / (x-5), which Alpha also handled with Aplomb (11/3 if you are lazy).
However, inputing the latter into Bing (without or without spaces for padding) gave no calculation or result, but just a bunch of (mostly unrelated) search results. Seems rather counter-productive on MS's part.
Apologies if this is excessively trivial.