When Edsger W. Dijkstra published his algorithm in 1959, computer networks were barely a thing. The algorithm in question found the shortest path between any two nodes on a graph, with a variant ...

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 ...

Most of you have used a navigation app like Google Maps for your travels at some point. These apps rely on algorithms that compute shortest paths through vast networks. Now imagine scaling that task ...

A guarantee for estimating distances across networks, set in 1996, now reaches much closer pairs of points than anyone had ...

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 ...