The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. 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 ...

If you are planning a trip through several cities and want to find the shortest route, you resort to algorithms, a well-defined sequence of deterministic operations. This article accompanies the ...

Systems Approach Last year a couple of people forwarded to me the same article on a new method of finding shortest paths in networks.… The underlying research claims to improve on the classic approach ...