Maths Feast 2024

On Wednesday 21st February four Year Ten students braved the wet weather and journeyed over to Raynes Park High School to compete in the annual Maths Feast (organised by the AMSP) against schools from the southwest of London. Over the course of two and a half hours they worked through 4 diverse rounds of questions. They particularly enjoyed the round that was based on TV quiz shows like Only Connect, House of Games and The 1% Club. They have asked us to try to incorporate it into a lesson for Year Ten Soon!

The logic round (named Maths Hatters) was like Marmite to the team: half of them liked it and the other half loathed it! The final round had a more creative flavour, as they had to construct Polyhedra using very specific instructions.

The icing on the cake was when the results were announced. Wilson’s won comprehensively with a score of 97 (out of 100). The second placed team could only manage a score in the eighties! We would like to send our congratulations to the students who took part as they worked brilliantly as a team: Abhinav, Jamie, Egemen and Gautam.

Intermediate Maths Challenge 2024

Last month, Years 9, 10 and 11 completed the Intermediate Maths Challenge—a series of interesting problems which rely heavily on logic and intuition to reach a solution (banner photo, top). Being heavily focused on problem solving over complexity, the problems were accessible, although being especially challenging. You needn’t have to listen in to much conversation across the school to realise that the challenge has sparked much interest and engagement in problem solving—a perhaps otherwise neglected skill that is essential to academia. One such problem from this year’s challenge was question 25:

‘A gold coin is worth x% more than a silver coin. The silver coin is worth y% less than the gold coin. Both x and y are positive integers. How many possible values for x are there?’

I found this problem interesting because although seeming impenetrable at first, thinking about it makes you realise it is very solvable with logic. Unlike ‘normal’ algebra problems, simply simplifying expressions will not yield a definitive answer (and trial and error certainly wouldn’t help!). Instead, it requires you to take the data provided to: (a) convert it into a useful form to make progress, and (b) to express the answer as a parametric equation (the answer is dependent on the values of x or y which ‘work’). But what’s so great about these problems is that there are always many routes you can take to reach the right answer. UKMT challenges are important in reminding students of the value of problem solving and applying existing knowledge, rather than just regurgitating facts to reach solutions.

Sam, Year Eleven