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The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle ...

The library sorting problem is used across computer science for organizing far more than just books. A new solution is less than a page-width away from the theoretical ideal. Computer scientists often ...

If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle the easiest pieces first. But this kind of sorting has a cost.