If you’ve been making the same commute for a long time, you’ve probably settled on what seems like the best route. But “best” is a slippery concept. Perhaps one day there’s an accident or road closure ...

In algorithms, as in life, negativity can be a drag. Consider the problem of finding the shortest path between two points on a graph — a network of nodes connected by links, or edges. Often, these ...

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Computer scientists have written a network flow algorithm that computes almost as fast as is mathematically possible. This algorithm computes the maximum traffic flow with minimum transport costs for ...

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 ...