For some, the Web site might be an educational tool, but for others it might be a quick way to get answers for homework assignments.

Audrey DeGuire, a graduate assistant who teaches Mathematics 132, Calculus I, has mixed feelings about the site’s potential.

“There’s no way you’ll learn if every time you have a problem, type in solve, it’ll show you how to do the problem,” DeGuire said. “That’s going to make me have to be much more clever about how to write homework problems and stuff.”

Although DeGuire was concerned about the site, she said it also could be a beneficial tool for students, providing a way to double-check answers.

“So long as you aren’t actually using it to solve equations, it can really help you build up intuition for what you’re looking for,” DeGuire said.

Jianliang Qian, an assistant professor of mathematics with a background in applied math and scientific computing, said having a program that could complete the step-by-step process could be beneficial, but students still would need to fully understand the concepts taught in class.

“The student has to take … exams, but during the exams they don’t have a computer with them,” Qian said.

Theodore Gray, director of user interface technology and cofounder of the Wolfram Research Company, said the site would not damage math education, but rather expand it and make it more widely available.

“People have said exactly the same thing about pocket calculators, you know, that this was the end of math as we know it,” Gray said.

Gray pointed out that these tools actually have advanced students’ mathematical abilities.

“Having tools that remove the road to computation, it allows students to go much further,” Gray said. “It allows a larger number of students to access the techniques that are available.”

Lauren Sarkady, a zoology senior, said although she would be tempted to use the program as a shortcut to completing her homework, she’d also find it to be a good tool for studying.

“I would probably use it if I couldn’t get an answer on a homework problem,” Sarkady said. “I would probably just try to work it out and then go (to the site) and go backwards.”

WolframAlpha has capabilities beyond solving math problems. Gray compared search engines such as Google to reference librarians that could provide users with books on a topic, while WolframAlpha could provide users with actual information.

“The goal with Alpha is that it will take your query and combine it with … its knowledge base and with operations that it can do and create brand-new things,” Gray said.

“(These are) new pieces of knowledge that didn’t exist before.”

Although a search engine will provide links to sites written by different authors, Gray said that WolframAlpha provides raw data collected from different sources and compiled in its databases.

“We concentrate completely on objective quantifiable fact, as opposed to opinion,” Gray said.