When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Mathematicians have solved a longstanding algebra problem, providing a general solution for ...

Ah, math. Take an easy problem we all studied in our teens, scale it up by just a couple of steps, and suddenly you’re facing something that has stumped generations of the world’s best mathematicians.

When I took Calculus in college, my Professor would give us substantial partial credit for test problems that we got wrong for minor arithmetic errors, and rightfully so, too. Sometimes even ...