The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price.

Computer science is the study and development of the protocols required for automated processing and manipulation of data. This includes, for example, creating algorithms for efficiently searching ...

Pete Rathburn is a copy editor and fact-checker with expertise in economics and personal finance and over twenty years of experience in the classroom. d3sign / Getty Images A blockchain is a secure ...

Acclaimed as a mathematical genius, Ada Lovelace is said to have understood the potential of the first computer blueprints better than their inventor. A serendipitous friendship with the mathematician ...

Getting good at LeetCode Java can feel like a puzzle sometimes, right? You see all these problems, and you’re not sure where ...