Try it on Wolfram Alpha.

Actually, they all seem to me pretty limited compared to the answers you get from Wolfram Alpha.

Also c.f. the responses to one of their test questions, "how much is a quarter cup of butter?". Google makes fun of the inquiry. Wolfram Alpha gives you a thorough nutritional profile, and links to variations based on international cup sizing and different types of butter.

Wolfram Alpha is amazing at discerning the intention of the question.

In the article, the question "How old is the Lincoln Tunnel" struck me as incorrectly formatted for the parser (I know, that's the point), so I asked Siri, "When was the Lincoln Tunnel built." The Wikipedia article on the Lincoln Tunnel was returned. Wolfram Alpha was listed under other sources, so I chose that. The response? "1937"

I've noticed lately that many times things I know Alpha will slam-dunk don't get routed to it by Siri. I'm not aware of the details of the deal we have with them but from my observations of Siri it looks like Apple might be looking for certain keywords (such as how, what, why, etc) before it tries routing anything to Alpha. I hope they can relax that in future.

Luckily if you say "Wolfram XXX" instead of just "XXX" Siri will route your question straight to Alpha no-questions-asked.

Google isn't making fun of the inquiry, it simply bring up the relevant snippet from the provided web page.

The result Google also gives you is wrong (since its also a just a snippet).

I'm not sure the query is really easily understandable. How much it costs? I assume it's to figure out which marking to cut on the stick wrapper?

I just learned that Canadian cups != American cups. (227g vs 218g) Who would have thought....

Wait a second. Cups are a measure of volume and not weight, though. Grams is not the right unit to compare here.

There are approximate conversions for recipes, since many American recipes use volume measures and expect you to have measuring cups, while European recipes expect you to have a kitchen scale. But yes, there isn't any single conversion, since density varies: there's one cups/grams ratio for granulated sugar, one for powdered sugar, one for sifted flour, one for water, etc.

Which, as a geek, I find superconfusing and generally insane. I wish cooking was treated as chemistry (which it de facto is) and at least used precise units and proper measuring tools.

Outside of baking, you really don't need to be that precise. Bakers typically weigh their ingredients to get the correct measurements.

Siri is based on Wolfram Alpha

If you look at what the answer is linking to (or in the snippet of the first result), it seems like that's just a bad parse. The answer should be "... the range of 10^78 to 10^82".

Siri gets this right: http://i.imgur.com/ueKduWW.jpg

It's also worth noting that Siri gives more verbose answers in "Hey Siri" mode, presumably because it assumes you're not looking at the screen.

Are you referring to the effect of the 'Voice Feedback' always/handsfree setting? I believe you can get the "more verbose" mode by just setting it to 'always' http://drop.petec.io/151n0

10^78 and 10^82

Just a formatting issue.

Formatting and pronunciation issues are a major stumbling block for these interfaces, though. If the device (or service behind it) can't identify "ten to the power of" when it sees 10^, I can't rely on being able to converse with my device for significant problem sets.

Solving it isn't really easy, either. When reading a document is a caret a power, a regular expression operator, an exclusive or, or a nose on a smiley? :^)

A lot of context identification work has to be sorted out for smart agents to succeed.

Google doesn't seem to understand the sup element.

I imagine that they kill all html to prevent xss and styling issues (they want to decide which text to bold, for instance.)