The x-factor

By Telegraph View. It sounds like a winning formula for the good life: “A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness.” That is how Omar Khayyam pictured his poetic life, at least according to the Victorian romantic Edward Fitzgerald, who recast his verses. But it wasn’t as easy as that desert idyll made out. In reality, Omar made his name as an early exponent of algebra. Yet today, young students of mathematics are gaining top grades at GCSE with little or no algebra. More...