Parents, schools and the government need to encourage young girls to study math and science, in addition to economics and humanities.

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And the fascination generated by further exploration will inspire our young people to study math and science and engineering and create a new generation of innovators and pioneers.

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He wanted to move on to college to study applied math and computer science.

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Ten cities have volunteered for the comparative study in math since the exam was first given in 2003.

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Eriksson's study shows how people can stumble when exposed to math outside their field of expertise.

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He proved himself something of a math prodigy, earning a scholarship to study the economics of raw material extraction at the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute.

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But a big attraction is the 57-year-old Yau himself: He's the leading Chinese mathematician and ranks among the top ten in the world, says Phillip Griffiths, a math professor and a former president of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

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In a 2007 study by psychologists from Columbia and Stanford, nearly 100 seventh graders (most of them struggling in math) participated in an eight-week workshop on studying.

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According to a recent study from the National Center for Education Statistics, African-American students continue to score significantly lower in reading and math than their white counterparts.

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In the study, Pollak and his colleagues asked 61 girls, ages 7 to 12, to give a speech or do math problems in front of an audience, a surefire way to make a kid stressed.

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