Head's Newsletter 30 November 2018

SENIOR TEAM MATHS CHALLENGE

SENIOR MATHS CHALLENGE In November, 118 boys took part in the UKMT’s Senior Maths Challenge, taken by hundreds of thousands of students nationally. The challenge consists of 25 multiple choice questions of increasing difficulty. We are delighted with the results, with 44 Golds (representing the top 10% nationally), 40 Silvers, and 37 boys invited for the follow on ‘Kangaroo’ round. 7 boys qualified for the prestigious British Maths Olympiad, with a large number of boys missing qualification by just a single question. Only 1000 students are invited nationally to take the Olympiad, a 3 hour exam consisting of just 6 questions. Those who do well in this are invited to Round 2 (consisting of just 100 students), which is used to select UK’s team to compete internationally. We have included an example question below! Congratulations to the boys on an outstanding set of results. BMO Question: “Prove that the product of 4 consecutive positive whole numbers can never be the product of 2 consecutive whole numbers.”

Over the half term, our Senior Maths team, consisting of Dipayan Chowdhury (Yr13), Vincent Trieu (Yr13), Arnav Jadhav (Yr11) and Ojas Gulati (Yr9) represented Tiffin School in the regional heats of the Senior Team Maths Challenge, run by the UK Mathematics Trust. The competition consisted of 3 rounds: the Group Round (consisting of 10 difficult problems), a ‘cross number’, and a relay, in which the answer of one person’s question fed into the next question. The heats consisted of 15 schools, although the half term timing fortunately meant that our historic rivals, Hampton School, were attending another heat! After the first two rounds, Tiffin, replicating their performance last year, had full marks. They made no errors in the last round, losing only a few marks for a time bonus. Their win was decisive, and have therefore subsequently been invited to attend the National Final in February. Well done to the boys.