Stephen Wolfram Q&A

Submit a question

Some collected questions and answers by Stephen Wolfram

Questions may be edited for brevity; see links for full questions.

January 8, 2013

From: Interview by Lars Mensel and Thore Barfuss, The European

Do we sometimes overestimate the power of computing?

One thing being discussed right now is the automated grading of student essays. A crazy idea! If that were to be implemented, people would soon learn how to write essays that are rather opaque to humans but will score really well with computers. It is equally mistaken as teaching people how to do calculus by hand. When one of my children showed me what they did in calculus class I said: “I didn’t think that humans still do that! I haven’t done something like this in 30 years”.

Contact | © Stephen Wolfram, LLC