National Young Mathematicians' Award

This week a team of four talented mathematicians, Alice, Catherine, Finn D and Max began their journey to be crowned National Young Mathematicians 2018. The competition, aimed at school children across the UK, allows children to compete against other teams across the country in a series of challenges with the finals being held in Cambridge hosted by Bobby Seagull of University Challenge fame. The first round was held in Sheen in what Catherine described as a supermarket! A variety of schools were competing in the preliminary round and once the team arrived they were assigned a set of four challenges based around the theme of dice. In some fiendishly hard investigations they had to use all their mathematical and reasoning skills to find every single possible outcome in just 55 minutes. The team worked collaboratively and, showing great organisational skills, spilt in to groups as the time began to run away. To Miss Slingsby and Mrs Jones’s delight they managed to complete all four challenges in the allotted time. However, this was just the first step as the team had to then explain their reasoning to the judges, describing how they worked systematically displaying their working out as they went. The team’s synopsis of the day was that it was a very challenging competition and, whilst we are still awaiting official results, they are confident they did their best and are already plotting strategy for the next round. Well done Maths Team – our fingers are crossed!