How the popular become even more popular
Some webpages are enormously popular, and many thousands of other webpages link to them. Yet, most webpages have only few,…
Category Archives: Articles
How uncertainty can make traffic run smoother
Making decisions that affect traffic can have an enormous impact on our daily lives, the environment and our economy. We…
Contest: How fast can you travel around the Netherlands?
The Netherlands is a small country, it has a total area of 33,893 square kilometers and is divided into twelve…
From the ateliers of great masters to the labs of the Rijksmuseum
Imagine that you are a young artist living in the 19th century. You study a lot and buy cheap paints…
NETWORKS goes to school 2020
It is almost time for the annual masterclass on network science organized by the NETWORKS program!
Google PageRank: how search engines `bring order to the Web'
A crucial innovation of Google was a mathematically quite simple but powerful algorithm called PageRank.
Attacking complex problems using preprocessing
A lot of services that we enjoy every day, for example commuting by train or ordering some product from a…
Mathematical rulers in Game of Thrones
The moment millions of fans have waited for is there: the finale of Game of Thrones. 75 characters in different…
Traffic lights no longer needed: back to the future
Traffic lights are currently an annoying but inevitable part of traffic. With the introduction of self-driving cars however, can we…
The seed bank, a hidden storage of genetic diversity
In 2012 a team of Russian scientists managed to germinate a 30.000 year old seed of an indigenous Siberian flower,…