The Challenge of Maths

The intermediate maths challenge was held in February and more than half of the students who sat it received a gold, silver or bronze certificate and six of the students scored highly enough to get through to the next round. Tom Hollidge, Charlie O’Neil, Saskia Hogan, Seb Bell and James Williams all got through to the Kangaroo round and Benjamin Chesser scored highly enough to not only win Best in School but also to get through to the level above the Kangaroo, the Olympiad. These rounds take place on Thursday 19^th March and we will be looking forward to receiving the results during in the Easter holidays.

The senior maths challenge was held in November and was open to all mathematicians in the sixth form. There was success here too as again more than half the students qualified to receive a certificate. Matylda Buckowska got through to the Kangaroo round and was one of the top 25% of those who took part which earned her a certificate of merit and Alasdair Johnston also got through to the next round but he scored highly enough to be invited to take part in the Olympiad round one in which he had to write full complete answers to six questions in three and a half hours. Unfortunately he did not do well enough to be invited to round two, but to get through to round one is an achievement in itself.

In addition to the maths challenge, the department took four lower fifth students to a ‘Maths Feast’ held at Surrey University run by the further maths support program. Charlie Andrews, Emma Grainger, Katherine Plewman and Callum Job all had a brilliant afternoon taking part in the challenge which saw nineteen schools from around the area battling it out to win. There were six rounds in total, all very different from each other, ranging from problem solving to building an origami Columbus cube to a relay round in which half the team had to answer a question and their result was used by the rest of the team to answer the next question. The students had a very enjoyable afternoon and they were particularly pleased when they won round three by getting full marks.

Charlotte Osner-Clarke