The most widely used technique for finding the largest or smallest values of a math function turns out to be a fundamentally difficult computational problem. Many aspects of modern applied research ...

Computability theory establishes which problems can in principle be solved by mechanical procedures, formalised by the Turing machine model and its equivalents. It draws a firm boundary between ...

From keeping our inboxes free from SPAM to mining your favorite cryptocurrencies, algorithms are all around us. While we feel like we’re drowning in an ocean of big data, clever algorithms are ...

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 ...