The Guardian – Marcus du Sautoy 
It’s extraordinary what a badge of honour it is in our culture to declare: “I’m terrible at maths. I just don’t have the brain for it.” You’d never get someone in India or China confessing to such a thing. Maths is regarded in such high esteem that admitting you can’t do it is akin to announcing you’re illiterate, something no one in the west would happily own up to. So how come so many people seem quite happy to declare their inability to do mathematics? Is it true that some people just don’t have the brains to do maths? Or can anyone who puts in enough hours become a maths genius? What about this condition dyscalculia, a learning difficulty for arithmetic? Are some brains badly wired for numeracy? Is being bad at maths all in the mind? How can you overcome a fear of the subject and make maths your friend? What exactly is maths anyway?.(more)