The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine that someone gives you a list of five numbers: 1, 6, 21, 107, and—wait for it—47,176,870. Can you guess what comes next? If ...

On Saturday, British mathematician Alan Turing would have turned 100 years old. It is barely fathomable to think that none of the computing power surrounding us today was around when he was born. But ...