P vs. NP asks: are these two classes actually the same? If P = NP, then every “hard” problem is secretly fast to solve; we ...

After 30 months of fast-paced innovation in quantum algorithms, six research groups are hoping to hit paydirt. But there can be only one big winner—if there is a winner at all. I’m standing in front ...

When a startup struggles, founders usually assume the solution is obvious: more marketing, more hiring, or more capital. But in my experience advising founders, the real issue is usually something ...

In 2019, Monte Leifheit, a warehouse operator at 3M, noticed his left eye was bloodshot and swollen. What began as a minor irritation turned into a yearlong medical odyssey marked by the lack of a ...

Some readers may solve the problem procedurally: line up the two numbers, add the ones column, carry the one, and add the tens to get 43. Others might instead notice a creative shortcut: 29 + 14 is ...

Over the past couple of months, several researchers have begun making the same provocative claim: They used generative-AI tools to solve a previously unanswered math problem. The most extreme promises ...

At a secret meeting in 2025, some of the world's leading mathematicians gathered to test OpenAI's newest large language model, o4-mini. Experts at the meeting were amazed by how much the model's ...

Your brain could be gently coaxed into working on complex problems while you sleep, making you better able to tackle them the next day. Now, Karen Konkoly at Northwestern University in Illinois and ...

Mathematics, like many other scientific endeavors, is increasingly using artificial intelligence. Of course, math is the backbone of AI, but mathematicians are also turning to these tools for tasks ...

In October 2024, news broke that Facebook parent company Meta had cracked an "impossible" problem that had stymied mathematicians for a century. In this case, the solvers weren't human. An artificial ...

Jake and Alma had yet another argument about money—budgets, who was spending what—but, like the others, it led to nowhere productive. But for other couples, it might not be about money but sex, or ...