Challenging Maths and the National Finals
A team of four Dean Close boys took an unprecedented sixth place at the National Finals of the UK Senior Team Maths Challenge 2011. Huge congratulations to captain Han Yan and team members Jiawei Zhu, Ed Garner and Frank Fu.
The competition began with a four-hour regional contest in which some 1800 schools from around the UK were entered. From this, 64 regional winners, including Dean Close, were selected to participate in the Final. The finishing scores were incredibly close, with Harrow winning with 179 out of 180, second place scoring 178 and then three teams tying on 173. This put Dean Close sixth with their 172 points. This was a tremendous achievement for the boys who put the success down to teamwork, where the rounds needed good communication and close co-operation.
Intermediate Mathematics Challenge
There were 170,000 entries in the traditional UK-wide Intermediate Maths Challenge where the top 6% achieve a gold certificate, the next 14% silver and the next 20% bronze.
The Challenge was taken by the top sets in the Fourth, Remove and Fifth forms and a few other volunteers. Ten pupils won gold, 23 silver and 17 bronze. Matthew Wheeler, Leon Lam and Jackie Kung all qualified for the next round of the competition.
Inter House Sudoku Competition
The Inter House Sudoku competition, now in its second year, had 150 entries. The Senior competition was won by Rebecca Smith and Juniors by Jasmine Shah, both in Shelburne .
Maths and your Career
This year the Mathematics Department started a programme of events around the theme of ‘maths and your career’.
We started off with a visit from Mr Swarbrick from William Hill, the world's biggest bookmaker. He went over the Mathematics of betting and got the Lower Sixth form to work out some challenging odds on the snooker championship.
Another visitor from General Electric, a local yet massive multi-National company, gave an impressive presentation showing the wide range of careers and challenges that would be available to those who had studied A level Mathematics.
The single Mathematicians then spent the last week of the year preparing their own presentation entitled ‘Mathematics and My Degree’. This gave pupils a chance to explore the connection with their studies now and at university.
The Double Mathematicians still had some exams to finish off, but were able to go along to the informative University of West of England Maths event day. Apart from hearing about more careers taken by those who studied Mathematics, they got to choose from a range of fascinating workshops ranging from analysis of the 1000 mph car (Bloodhound project) to Finding Pi which used the Monte-Carlo principle.
In the Pre University week Old Decanian Sam Wong came to speak to aspiring Mathematics undergraduates. Sam is currently studying Mathematics at UCL, London and engaged his audience with amongst other details, examples of first year work.