In math, as in life, small choices can have big consequences. This is especially true in graph theory, a field that studies networks of objects and the connections between them. Here’s a little puzzle ...

Researchers thought that they were five years away from solving a math riddle from the 1980's. In reality, and without knowing, they had nearly cracked the problem and had just given away much of the ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in ...