12-year-old Nigerian Boy Awarded for Discovering New Maths Formula

A 12-year-old Nigerian boy, Chika Ofili has been reportedly awarded the TruLittle Hero award for discovering a new way to divide in mathematics. Chika discovered the new formula while solving a holiday assignment.

Chika’s mathematic’s teacher, Miss Mary Ellis who is also the head of the mathematics department at Westminster Under School revealed that she gave Chika a book called First Steps for Problem Solvers (published by the UKMT) to study during the holidays.

The book had several divisibility tests which are used to quickly work out whether a number is exactly divisible by either 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 before you start dividing, but had no easy or memorable test listed for checking divisibility by 7.