There is a serious bug in Wolfram Alpha's "math input" mode. When you enter e²ⁿ, it is interpreted as e²n (full details at the end). This was reported to them a month ago and still hasn't been fixed, so I figured it was time for some public shaming ;)<p>I've been really impressed with Wolfram Alpha over the years (both the natural language parsing and the power of Mathematica); my main issue until now has been that the natural language parser tends fail on inputs beyond some length (fortunately Mathematica syntax is also supported and works well). So I was very surprised when this glaring bug in math input mode was shared with me.<p>Full steps to reproduce:<p>1. Go to <a href="https://www.wolframalpha.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wolframalpha.com/</a><p>2. Click "MATH INPUT"<p>3. Click the "power" button (second from the right, icon is two boxes with one in superscript)<p>4. Type "e" (it should go in the first box)<p>5. Click the superscript box<p>6. Type "2n"<p>7. Click the "=" button<p>Result: The input field correctly shows e²ⁿ (with the "n" in superscript), but the formula shown in the "Input" section is e²n (the "n" is outside the exponent) and the "Plot" section shows a straight line which confirms that the input was misinterpreted as e² * n.<p>Explicitly adding parentheses around the "2n" fixes this. Ironically, when you do that the "Input" section shows the formula as e²ⁿ (without the parentheses; the same version that fails when entered in the input field).
Wolfram Alpha's math input is broken in other ways as well:
<a href="https://bostick.github.io/blog/2024/05/precision-bombing/" rel="nofollow">https://bostick.github.io/blog/2024/05/precision-bombing/</a><p>Entering input such as:
1*^-1355718576299609<p>or:<p>1.0`90071992<p>will trigger bad behavior on the site.