Something extraordinary has happened, even if we haven’t fully realized it yet: algorithms are now capable of solving ...

When scientists test algorithms that sort or classify data, they often turn to a trusted tool called Normalized Mutual Information (or NMI) to measure how well an algorithm's output matches reality.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price.

Cryptography secures communication in banking, messaging, and blockchain. Good algorithms (AES, RSA, ECC, SHA-2/3, ChaCha20) are secure, efficient, and widely trusted. Bad algorithms (DES, MD5, SHA-1, ...

For example, 6 contributes 6 when it’s in an undoubled position, and it contributes 3 from a doubled position because 6 doubled equals 12 and 1 + 2 = 3. Messing up a single number while typing your ...