In 2015, Esther Okade seemed like a normal 10-year-old who loves Barbie dolls and dressing up as Elsa from Frozen. But she was also a mathematics marvel who had just enrolled at college!

Esther Okade is a British Nigerian mathematics child prodigy from Walsall, United Kingdom. She was described by CNN as a "maths genius", and is one of the UK's youngest PhD students. In 2015, at the age of 10, she enrolled at the Open University, a UK-based distance learning college. She took maths and began getting straight A's. Three weeks after enrolment, she was already top of the class, receiving a perfect score on her first test, which she said was "easy." Her mother started homeschooling her at the age of three, and at the age of six she took her first GCSE exams at the Ounsdale High School in Wolverhampton, scoring a B-grade when she wrote the Math A-level exam. She is the author of a series of mathematics workbooks for children called "Yummy Yummy Algebra". In a 2015 interview with CNN, Esther talked about her love of math and continuing her education. "It's so interesting. It has the type of maths I love. It's real maths theories, complex numbers, all that type of stuff," she said. "I want to finish the course in two years. Then I'm going to do my PhD in financial maths when I'm 13. I want to have my own bank by the time I'm 15 because I like numbers and I like people and banking is a great way to help people." What is most inspiring about Esther's story is that she's not taking advanced math courses simply because she can; she's doing it because mathematics is her passion the same way sports or music is for other kids. As of 2019, she has been working on a PhD at the Open University, a world-leading research institution in the United Kingdom known for its flexible and innovative teaching, with students from 157 countries. The Open University has been offering distance learning in higher education for more than 50 years.

cnn.com

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