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Computational complexity

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Researchers Approach New Speed Limit for Seminal Problem

January 29, 2024

Integer linear programming can help find the answer to a variety of real-world problems. Now researchers have found a much faster way to do it.

‘Magical’ Error Correction Scheme Proved Inherently Inefficient

January 9, 2024

Locally correctable codes need barely any information to fix errors, but they’re extremely long. Now we know that the simplest versions can’t get any shorter.

The Year in Computer Science

December 20, 2023

Artificial intelligence learned how to generate text and art better than ever before, while computer scientists developed algorithms that solved long-standing problems.

An Easy-Sounding Problem Yields Numbers Too Big for Our Universe

December 4, 2023

Researchers prove that navigating certain systems of vectors is among the most complex computational problems.

Alan Turing and the Power of Negative Thinking

September 5, 2023

Mathematical proofs based on a technique called diagonalization can be relentlessly contrarian, but they help reveal the limits of algorithms.

Complexity Theory’s 50-Year Journey to the Limits of Knowledge

August 17, 2023

How hard is it to prove that problems are hard to solve? Meta-complexity theorists have been asking questions like this for decades. A string of recent results has started to deliver answers.

To Move Fast, Quantum Maze Solvers Must Forget the Past

July 20, 2023

Quantum algorithms can find their way out of mazes exponentially faster than classical ones, at the cost of forgetting the path they took. A new result suggests that the trade-off may be inevitable.

How to Build a Big Prime Number

July 13, 2023

A new algorithm brings together the advantages of randomness and deterministic processes to reliably construct large prime numbers.

Computer Scientists Inch Closer to Major Algorithmic Goal

June 23, 2023

A new paper finds a faster method for determining when two mathematical groups are the same.

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