Matrix multiplication is at the heart of many machine learning breakthroughs, and it just got faster—twice. Last week, DeepMind announced it discovered a more efficient way to perform matrix ...

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.

What’s seven times nine? Quick, you’ve got six seconds to answer. This June, over 600,000 children in England in year four, aged eight and nine, will be expected to answer questions like this. They ...