An unknown mathematician, Yitang Zhang, has revolutionized his field and helped move forward a 2,000-year-old conjecture about prime numbers. His counterintuitive findings show that special pairs of primes, called twin primes, can never be more than 70 million places away from one another.

This article just gave me the little push that I needed. Never underestimate the power of perseverance. 

Studying and practicing math is so difficult and boring that very few people do it. A new study suggest there may be an easier way. Scientists stimulated volunteers’ brains with mild electric current while they learned new arithmetic operations based on made-up symbols. Those who received this brain stimulation learned quicker — and retained a performance edge six months later.