Maths Competitions
Our students have been out and about representing the school in Maths competitions recently. This is quite a different prospect to doing Maths in class with the teacher’s help, and involves performing under considerable pressure of time as well as difficulty.
The Lower and Upper Fifth teams went to the University of South Wales for a Maths Quiz. The two teams of five worked together to solve a range of puzzles, and the Upper Fifth team of Nina Guy, Anoushka Long, Pearl Oakwood, Dan Corbett and Alex Higginbottom did particularly well to finish in the top five with a score of 14/20. (The winning score was 16).
The biggest team event of the year is the regional heat of the Senior Team Maths Challenge. The squad of 12 students had been preparing since September for the big day – only 4 were selected. There are three rounds to the competition – a group round with 10 problems to solve together, a crossnumber where one pair are given the across clues only and the other pair the down clues, and the relay round. The relay is the ultimate test – solving four questions in six minutes, and waiting for your team mates to give you the next clue in order to proceed – and it proved as challenging as ever. The team of Jack Slingsby (captain), Nikita Li, Simon Wang and Zac Brannan achieved the best result for a number of years, finishing second in the heat, but not quite enough to go to the national final.
In the individual Senior Maths Challenge, Sidcot achieved a record 11 Gold Awards, 20 Silver and 6 Bronze Awards out of 71 participants. A number of the Gold Award students have gone on to the next round – we expect the results after Christmas.
Here is a question from the Group Round of the Senior Team competition:
In the highest scoring match of the World Cup, Hongeria beat Alduras 19 goals to 9.
If Alduras were never in the lead, how many possible scores could there have been at half time?
Graham Hartley
Head of Mathematics Faculty