The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling ...

Computer scientists have written a network flow algorithm that computes almost as fast as is mathematically possible. This algorithm computes the maximum traffic flow with minimum transport costs for ...

If you’ve been making the same commute for a long time, you’ve probably settled on what seems like the best route. But “best” is a slippery concept. Perhaps one day there’s an accident or road closure ...

In algorithms, as in life, negativity can be a drag. Consider the problem of finding the shortest path between two points on a graph — a network of nodes connected by links, or edges. Often, these ...

Researchers at FIU’s College of Engineering and Computing have developed an encryption algorithm to defend videos from attackers with access to the world's most powerful computers. The encryption ...

In 1971, German mathematicians Schönhage and Strassen predicted a faster algorithm for multiplying large numbers, but it ...