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 ...

In today’s criminal justice system, there are more than 400 algorithms on the market that inform important legal decisions like sentencing and parole. Much like insurance companies use algorithms to ...

In 1994, a mathematician figured out how to make a quantum computer do something that no ordinary classical computer could. The work revealed that, in principle, a machine based on the rules of ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. 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 ...