Combinatorial optimization problems are problems that arise in everyday situations, involving the puzzle of determining the shortest route that can be taken between multiple points. Researchers have ...

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 ...

It’s a problem that sounds simple, but the best minds in mathematics have puzzled over it for generations: A salesman wants to hawk his wares in several cities and return home when he’s done. If he’s ...

One of the most classic algorithmic problems deals with calculating the shortest path between two points. A more complicated variant of the problem is when the route traverses a changing network - ...

We have found the best path to take between the stars. The travelling salesman problem, an infamous mathematical puzzle that seeks the shortest route between many locations while visiting each only ...

Not long ago, a team of researchers from Stanford and McGill universities broke a 35-year record in computer science by an almost imperceptible margin — four hundredths of a trillionth of a trillionth ...