barrier

Almost everybody knows about Jackie Robinson and the historic role he played integrating Major League Baseball. But mention Willie O’Ree – who broke the NHL’s color barrier – and you’ll likely receive a blank look. That may start to change. On Jan. 19, 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill awarding O'Ree a Congressional Gold Medal. A day earlier, the Boston Bruins retired O'Ree’s number 22 on the 64th anniversary of the night the forward from New Brunswick, Canada became the first Black person to play in a National Hockey League game. O’Ree had always known he possessed the talent to play in the NHL. A speedy skater with an intuitive feel for the game, he had played organized hockey since he was five years old and had scored 22 goals with 12 assists in his first professio...

Computers are good at answering questions. What’s the shortest route from my house to Area 51? Is 8,675,309 a prime number? How many teaspoons in a tablespoon? For questions like these, they’ve got you covered. There are certain innocent-sounding questions, though, that computer scientists believe computers will never be able to answer – at least not within our lifetimes. These problems are the subject of the P versus NP question, which asks whether problems whose solutions can be checked quickly can also be solved quickly. P versus NP is such a fundamental question that either designing a fast algorithm for one of these hard problems or proving you can’t would net you a cool million dollars in prize money. My favorite hard problem is the traveling salesperson problem. Given a collection...

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A New Approach Breaks A Barrier That’s Stood For Nearly Half A Century – Planning The Best Route With Multiple Destinations Is Hard Even For Supercomputers