The book titled, “The Golden ticket”, gives a non-technical introduction to the most important unsolved problem in the computer science,“Whether P = NP?”. If you are curious about knowing this problem and do not want to slog through the dense math behind it, then this book might be a perfect introduction to the problem. The author makes sure that the concepts are introduced using plain English and nothing more. By the time you are done with the book, I bet you will start appreciating a few if not all the NP-complete problems that are yet to be cracked.

Via Sarada: Professor Babai of the University of Chicago recently made an alleged breakthrough in theoretical computer science which concerns the problem of graph isomorphism. In lecture, we have often been told that there are massive networks in biology and social media, to only name two areas, that can not be effectively visualized because of the sheer mass of links and nodes; these networks can grow to be so convoluted that computers occasionally have a difficult time telling if two networks are, in fact, identical or not in an acceptably short time.

Via Wired : A pure mathematician, when stuck on the problem under study, often decides to narrow the problem further and so avoid the obstruction. An applied mathematician interprets being stuck as an indication that it is time to learn more mathematics and find better tools.

Via [NYT](When a Unicorn Start-Up Stumbles, Its Employees Get Hurt): This article shows the painful reality of employees who worked at a $1B valued start-up, that went south. Instead of they getting paid to work, the employees ended up paying to work for the start-up.

If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important. - Bertrand Russell