“Imagine a computation that produces a new bit of information in every step, based on the bits that it has computed so far. Over t steps of time, it may generate up to t new bits of information in ...

A recent study from researchers at MIT says that conquering Super Mario Bros. levels can be just as tough as solving high-level mathematical problems. Those who have been stumped by some of the ...

If you’ve found that solving the most challenging levels of Super Mario Maker can be as taxing as your toughest college mathematics problem sets, you’re not alone, and now there’s scientific research ...

Having been invented in the US in the mid-20th century, Scrabble is now available in dozens of languages and sells in numbers measured in hundreds of millions. That makes it one of the most popular ...

Completing a game of "Super Mario Brothers" can be hard -- very, very hard. That's the conclusion of a new paper from researchers at MIT, the University of Ottawa, and Bard College at Simon's Rock.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling ...

One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling discovery about the relationship between time and memory in computing.

What’s easy for a computer to do, and what’s almost impossible? Those questions form the core of computational complexity. We present a map of the landscape. How fundamentally difficult is a problem?