Multiplication of two numbers is easy, right? At primary school we learn how to do long multiplication like this: Methods similar to this go back thousands of years, at least to the ancient Sumerians ...

Four thousand years ago, the Babylonians invented multiplication. Last month, mathematicians perfected it. On March 18, two researchers described the fastest method ever discovered for multiplying two ...

People tend to obsess over making computer software faster. You can, of course, just crank up the clock speed and add more processors, but often the most powerful way to make something faster is to ...

Algorithms have been used throughout the world’s civilizations to perform fundamental operations for thousands of years. However, discovering algorithms is highly challenging. Matrix multiplication is ...

This summer, battle lines were drawn over a simple math problem: 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2) = ? If you divide 8 by 2 first, you get 16, but if you multiply 2 by (2 + 2) first, you get 1. So, which answer is right?

Alphabet Inc.’s DeepMind unit today detailed AlphaTensor, an artificial intelligence system capable of discovering new algorithms that can be used to solve mathematical problems. DeepMind researchers ...