Most of you have used a navigation app like Google Maps for your travels at some point. These apps rely on algorithms that compute shortest paths through vast networks. Now imagine scaling that task ...

Looking at a flight tracker often shows a wide range of interestingly shaped routes. They may look strange, but there is a ...

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 ...

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 the easiest pieces first. But this kind of sorting has a cost.