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 ...

Mashable’s series Algorithms explores the mysterious lines of code that increasingly control our lives — and our futures. “The Algorithm” is impenetrable. It’s mysterious, it’s all-knowing, it’s ...

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 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 ...

When Elon Musk first proposed taking over Twitter, one the first changes he claimed he'd make would be “open-sourcing” Twitter’s algorithm. Last week, Twitter finally followed through on that promise, ...

For better accountability, we should shift the focus from the design of these systems to their impact. Describing a decision-making system as an “algorithm” is often a way to deflect accountability ...

New research from Mozilla shows that user controls have little effect on which videos YouTube’s influential AI recommends. YouTube’s recommendation algorithm drives 70% of what people watch on the ...

Algorithms have taken on an almost mythical significance in the modern world. They determine what you see on social media and when browsing online, help form people’s belief systems, and impact the ...

An exclusive excerpt from Every Screen On The Planet reveals how the social media app’s powerful recommendation engine was shaped by a bunch of ordinary, twentysomething curators—including a guy named ...