A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised a potentially more effective way of helping computers solve some of the toughest optimization problems they face. Their ...

Two computer scientists found — in the unlikeliest of places — just the idea they needed to make a big leap in graph theory. This past October, as Jacob Holm and Eva Rotenberg were thumbing through a ...

Back in the hazy olden days of the pre-2000s, navigating between two locations generally required someone to whip out a paper map and painstakingly figure out the most optimal route between those ...

Computer scientists are abuzz over a fast new algorithm for solving one of the central problems in the field. (January 15, 2017, update: On January 4, Babai retracted his claim that the new algorithm ...

A professor has helped create a powerful new algorithm that uncovers hidden patterns in complex networks, with potential uses in fraud detection, biology and knowledge discovery. University of ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle ...