A new quantum-inspired algorithm has cracked a problem so massive that conventional supercomputers struggle to even approach it. Researchers used the method to simulate extraordinarily complex quantum ...

Liam Price just cracked a 60-year-old problem that world-class mathematicians have tried and failed to solve. He’s 23 years old and has no advanced mathematics training. What he does have is a ChatGPT ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1939, upon arriving late to his statistics course at UC Berkeley, George Dantzig—a first-year graduate student—copied two problems ...

Lindsey Ellefson is Lifehacker’s Features Editor. She currently covers study and productivity hacks, as well as household and digital decluttering, and oversees the freelancers on the sex and ...

Determining the least expensive path for a new subway line underneath a metropolis like New York City is a colossal planning challenge—involving thousands of potential routes through hundreds of city ...

The leading approach to the simplex method, a widely used technique for balancing complex logistical constraints, can’t get any better. In 1939, upon arriving late to his statistics course at the ...

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.

Consider someone who’s perfectly content with their office chair. It’s not ergonomic, it doesn’t have lumbar support, but it works. Then, during a meeting or a visit to a friend’s office, they sit in ...

Using an advanced Monte Carlo method, Caltech researchers found a way to tame the infinite complexity of Feynman diagrams and solve the long-standing polaron problem, unlocking deeper understanding of ...

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 ...