Algorithms

Computer scientists have been searching for years for a type of problem that a quantum computer can solve but that any possible future classical computer cannot. Now they’ve found one.

A century ago, the great mathematician David Hilbert posed a probing question in pure mathematics. A recent advance in optimization theory is bringing Hilbert’s work into a world of self-driving cars.

The latest in a new series of proofs brings theoretical computer scientists within striking distance of one of the great conjectures of their discipline.

Even with no one in charge, army ants work collectively to build bridges out of their bodies. New research reveals the simple rules that lead to such complex group behavior.

New algorithms show how swarms of very simple robots can be made to work together as a group.

The quest for "quantum supremacy" – unambiguous proof that a quantum computer does something faster than an ordinary computer – has paradoxically led to a boom in quasi-quantum classical algorithms.

To efficiently analyze a firehose of data, scientists first have to break big numbers into bits.

The real-world version of the famous “traveling salesman problem” finally gets a good-enough solution.

Just five days after posting a retraction, László Babai announced that he had fixed the error in his landmark graph isomorphism algorithm.