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NIGERIAN youngster Master Chika Ofili has won a special academic award in the UK after making a shocking new discovery in mathematics for divisibility by seven that makes studying of the subject a lot easier.
Chika, 12, came up with the new formula for divisibility of seven which enables mathematicians to multiply the last digit in a figure and then add everything together, then check if the new figure is a multiple of 7. For example, to check if seven can divide 532, the process involves 53 + 2 x 5= 63, as because 63 is a multiple of seven hence seven can divide it.
In an article in an educational journal, his mathematics teacher, Mary Ellis who is also the head of the maths department at Westminster Under School, said Chika discovered the new formula after a holiday assignment. She said that she gave Chika a book called First Steps for Problem Solvers to study during the holidays and he arrived at the formula after going through it.
The book contained 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. However, there was no test listed for checking divisibility by seven because there is no easy or memorable test for dividing by seven but Chika Ofili solved this problem.
Chika discovered that if you take the last digit of any whole number, multiply it by five and then add this to the remaining part of the number, you will get a new number. If this new number is divisible by seven, then the original number is divisible by seven.
After cracking the formula, Chika then demonstrated his new formula in front of the school faculty. Afterwards, Ms Ellis got a neutral mathematics guru, her younger brother Simon, who also taught mathematics, to test the theory.
Simon tested the theory and wrote an algebraic proof for it. He further discovered that the test works if you start by multiplying the last digit by 12, 19, 26, 33 and then add it to the remaining part of the number.
