Online algorithms are designed to make decisions sequentially, without complete knowledge of future inputs. In many real-world applications—from scheduling and resource allocation to network ...

Quantum computers—devices that process information using quantum mechanical effects—have long been expected to outperform classical systems on certain tasks. Over the past few decades, researchers ...

A major advance reveals deep connections between the classes of problems that computers can — and can’t — possibly do. At first glance, the big news coming out of this summer’s conference on the ...

Computer scientists are looking to evolutionary biology for inspiration in the search for optimal solutions among astronomically huge sets of possibilities. Creationists love to insist that evolution ...

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 ...