This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I was enchanted with the words metonymy and ...

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 ...

Mathematicians love a good puzzle. Even something as abstract as multiplying matrices (two-dimensional tables of numbers) can feel like a game when you try to find the most efficient way to do it.