Wolfram Alpha, which computes answers to factual queries rather than return typical search results, announced a partnership with sports information, content, and technology provider Stats LLC to incorporate statistics for every NFL team, game, and player from the past 25 years. The deal comes just in time for the Denver Broncos-New England Patriots playoff game that on Saturday will split sports column inches between Tim Tebow and Tom Brady.
With the addition of NFL data to its knowledge base, Wolfram Alpha can now visualize and explore historical football statistics, add even more hours to the time people spend on their football fantasy leagues, and settle countless arguments by answering football questions that are difficult if not impossible to research using traditional search engines.
For example, the query “compare Tim Tebow and Tom Brady in 2011” returns a comparison chart of their important statistics (see below). It can also answer more complex questions, like “NFL team with the worst third-down conversion percentage” or other things that require both research and calculations.
“Since Wolfram Alpha launched in 2009, our users have pushed us to allow them to explore sports data in a way that is only possible with Wolfram Alpha,” says “There are plenty of online resources available to provide fans with big, static tables of team or player statistics. However, our goal is to do for sports what we’ve done for hundreds of other areas of data: give you direct answers to specific questions, through an intuitive natural-language interface,” said Luc Barthelet, executive director of Wolfram Alpha.
Wolfram Alpha LLC is a Wolfram Research company. The company aims to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything.
Stats is a leading sports technology, data, and content company with a worldwide client network of media companies and professional sports leagues and teams that utilize its dynamic in-game broadcast presentations and virtual images, multimedia enhancements, and game analysis and tactical coaching tools. Stats is owned jointly by the Associated Press and News Corp.
Related links:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/resource/nfl.html
