The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Computer scientists often deal with abstract problems that are hard to comprehend, but an exciting new algorithm matters to anyone who ...

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 ...

We’re suckers for the kind of “life hacks” that tell you that you’ve been doing some relatively mundane task all wrong, and that there’s a super-easy alternative which can massively speed up your ...

The way that books are selected for publication has remained basically the same for years: editors read over a manuscript and decide if they think it has potential and is a good fit. But that could be ...

It’s the multimillion pound question that publishers and writers have been pondering for decades: what makes a bestseller? Attempting to write one could certainly pay off – the highest-paid author in ...

The question of how much power algorithms have over our lives has a topical edge. Already there are lines of code that tell us what to watch, whom to date, and even whom to send to jail. In Hello ...