Founders and CEOs on Reddit

Stephen Wolfram

Founder and CEO of Wolfram Research

Company Wolfram Research ↗

u/StephenWolfram-Real ↗AMA only

How we know it's theirs

His 2012 r/IAmA AMA, posted from this account

We retrieved 6 posts and 23 comments from u/StephenWolfram-Real, dated 2012 to 2020, most often in r/IAmA.

Best moment

A redditor wrote in r/IAmA

On “I'm Stephen Wolfram (Mathematica, NKS, Wolfram|Alpha, ...), Ask Me Anything”

What is the most interesting use of Mathematica and/or Wolfram Alpha you've ever seen?

u/StephenWolfram-Real replied

There are so many; very hard to pick just one. An old one for Mathematica: Mike Foale was using it on the Mir space station; there was an accident; the computer it was on got sucked into space; Mike had…

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There are so many; very hard to pick just one.

An old one for Mathematica: Mike Foale was using it on the Mir space station; there was an accident; the computer it was on got sucked into space; Mike had a backup disk, but needed a password for a different computer; all-time favorite call to customer service ... and finally an in-action solving of equations of motion for a spinning space station.

Of course, for me personally, my favorite Mathematica "uses" are the research for A New Kind of Science, Wolfram|Alpha ... and the building of Mathematica itself.

More moments

A redditor wrote in r/IAmA

On “I Am Stephen Wolfram, Founder & CEO of Wolfram Research & Creator of the Wolfram Language, Mathematica & Wolfram|Alpha”

Do you see working from home to be a more common and expected thing in the future?

u/StephenWolfram-Real replied

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I have to say that I've been "working from home" for most of my working life (i.e. 40+ years). I've had some fine offices to go to, but somehow I always end reverting to working at home. It's not that I don't like people, but somehow I find I'm more productive at home. Back in the day (~1980) I worked at home by having a dumb terminal connected to an acoustic coupler continuously dialed up to a computer. [Remarkably, it glitched only about every 6 months...]

At my company, perhaps half our people work at home, scattered around the world. (And some seem to travel randomly from place to place :) ) I'm not sure if it works well for everyone, but for the kind of get-things-done people we like, it seems to work well.

A redditor wrote in r/IAmA

On “I Am Stephen Wolfram, Founder & CEO of Wolfram Research & Creator of the Wolfram Language, Mathematica & Wolfram|Alpha”

I've read before how you're an enthusiast about keeping "personal analytics" and I noted that you touched on that in your recent essay/post. What have been the most useful personal analytics that you've tracked? And, if I may ask a follow-up to that: What have been the most…

u/StephenWolfram-Real replied

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The most useful thing by far that I have is a good email archive, going back 30 years, and well searchable. Also an OCR'ed archive of pretty much every piece of paper in my life. As far as data goes, I find my real-time dashboard of email backlog as a function of time pretty helpful. Oh, and I also find my count-up timer of how long I've been asleep useful. Other personal analytics I end up accumulating, and then look at if I have a specific question.

Actually, there's another thing: I've noticed that a day or two before I get sick with a fever, my heart rate seems to go up. However, in an example of how difficult medical science can be, I've (happily) only gotten sick 3 times in the last 3 years or so since I've been continuously measuring my heart rate. The first two times I saw this effect. But the most recent time I don't think I did, though it was hard to tell because other things were affecting my heart rate...