Ms. Jong-Fast is a contributing Opinion writer. Donald Trump has never been much for gratitude or giving back. The notion that he owes anybody anything for his success is anathema to his winners-gonna ...

Determining the least expensive path for a new subway line underneath a metropolis like New York City is a colossal planning challenge—involving thousands of potential routes through hundreds of city ...

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 ...

Children as young as 4 years old are capable of finding efficient solutions to complex problems, such as independently inventing sorting algorithms developed by computer scientists. The scientists ...

Using an advanced Monte Carlo method, Caltech researchers found a way to tame the infinite complexity of Feynman diagrams and solve the long-standing polaron problem, unlocking deeper understanding of ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. For computer scientists, solving problems is a bit like mountaineering. First they must choose a problem to solve—akin to identifying a ...

It’s been difficult to find important questions that quantum computers can answer faster than classical machines, but a new algorithm appears to do it for some critical optimization tasks. For ...

Right now, quantum computers are small and error-prone compared to where they’ll likely be in a few years. Even within those limitations, however, there have been regular claims that the hardware can ...

The library sorting problem is used across computer science for organizing far more than just books. A new solution is less than a page-width away from the theoretical ideal. Computer scientists often ...

Greedy people often take more than they need and don’t have much sympathy for the people they take from. There are several reasons for this, but one in particular is that greedy people will never ...