Parents scared by children's maths homework
A fifth of parents with children aged 6-16 avoid their child's maths homework as working with numbers scares them, a survey has found. When they do give maths homework a go, 52 per cent of parents admit they get it wrong, while 17 per cent tell their children to ask their maths teacher for more help and do not get involved. Adding and subtracting without a calculator is a skill one-in-four parents say they would not be able to pass on.
Mathematician claims to have solved the Reimann hypothesis
One of the world's most renowned mathematicians showed how he solved the 160-year-old Riemann hypothesis at a lecture earlier this week. Sir Michael Atiyah, who has already won the two biggest prizes in mathematics - the Fields Medal and Abel Prize - took the stage at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany to present his work. To solve the hypothesis you need to find a way to predict the occurrence of every prime number, even though primes have historically been regarded as randomly distributed.