title: How does Wolfram Alpha work?
body: <p>Behind the tables and tables of raw data, how does Wolfram Alpha work?</p>
  
  <p>I imagine there are various artificial intelligence mechanisms driving the site but I can't fathom how anyone would put something like this together. Are there any explanations that would help a programmer understand how something like this is created? Does the knowledge base learn on its own or is it taught very specific details in a very organized manner? What kind of structure and language is used to store this type of data?</p>
  
  <p>Obviously this is a huge question and can't fully be answered here but some of the general concepts would be nice to know so I can build off of them and do my own research.</p>