Our feet are firmly on the ground, so you can keep thinking in the clouds.

The New York Times reported (amongst many others) that Big Blue (IBM) has a Super Computer named "Watson" that is going to challenge former Jeopardy! champions on the television show in the coming months. This is huge news (for geeks like me). Why is this a big deal?

Computers are fantastic at answering questions, when questions are posed in a direct fashion, and the computer database being queried has data to formulate a response. We all know that, and many of us make a living off developing computer programs and databases based on this paradigm. Take for example the below:

Display all orders for customer number 1000

A computer database may have tables called "Orders" and "Customers". A simple table in between "Orders" and "Customers" would be "Customer Orders". This last table simply contains information about the customer number and the order number, so you can ask the database something like this:

SELECT OrderDetails from Orders WHERE OrderNumber in (SELECT OrderNumber from CustomerOrders WHERE CustomerNumber = 1000)

It's not rocket science by no means. This is a simple Transact SQL statement that asks a database to return some information. It starts by getting all OrderNumbers for a given CustomerNumber, and then displays the OrderDetails for all of those OrderNumbers. Ok, enough, I know.

Compare this rigid logic to what "Watson" can do...

First off, "Watson" is a Super Computer from the IBM BlueGene line. This line of Super Computers are the fastest in the world when put together in certain ways. The Apple television ad for the iPad says the iPad is "Crazy Powerful", not so much when you compare to Watson... Watson really is CRAZY POWERFUL.

Watson can answer questions that Alex Trebek asks on Jeopardy! Watson can answer them very quickly. Watson can beat some Jeopardy! champions. Why is that such a big deal?

Think about the questions on Jeopardy! It isn't a simple logical question. There are puns, inferences, "Potent Potables", twisted phrases, etc. I love the example on page 2 of the New York Times article (reference and link below), which uses Sherlock Holmes fittingly. Here is the question (or answer for you Jeopardy! purists)...

The name of this hat is elementary, my dear contestant

How does a computer even begin to answer this kind of question? The answer (or question for you Jeopardy! zealots) is

What is a Deerstalker hat

This is a crazy thing for a computer to answer. It's simply incredible. It's also kind of creepy, but in a Super Computer cool kind of way.

Please read the entire New Your Times article, it's great --> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html?pagewanted=1

Kieron