2 Black HS Seniors Solve Mathematical Puzzle Thought To Be Impossible

2 high school seniors had proved a mathematical puzzle that was thought to be impossible for two thousand years. CBS News 60 Minutes, met Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson at their all-girls Catholic high school in New Orleans. And, as we first reported last year, we expected to find two mathematical prodigies. Instead, we found at St. Mary’s Academy, all students are told their possibilities are boundless. In a city where uniqueness is celebrated, St. Mary’s stands out – with young African American women playing trombones and tubas, twirling batons and dancing – doing it all, which defines St. Mary’s, students told us.

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Both had studied geometry and some trigonometry, and both told us math was not easy. What no one told them was there had been more than 300 documented proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem using algebra and geometry, but for 2,000 years a proof using trigonometry was thought to be impossible, … and that was the bonus question facing them. To Read The Full Story Click The Link Below