Faculty of Mathematics & Computing

Thiswas an incredibly tough year for all our students and the whole faculty. After a term of disjointed teaching and learning, we entered the second lockdown. Blended learning and remote teaching took its toll on progress through the course and the assessment programme. We were full of sympathy for the examination cohorts who prepared for their January mock exams, only to have the goal posts moved further and further into the future, eventually sitting rounds of assessments in March and May 2021. Those students should be incredibly proud of how they rose to that unprecedented challenge.

As the year progressed, we attempted to keep as much normalcy as possible for our students. We still managed to hold the UKMT Junior Mathematics Challenge (Years 7-8) and Intermediate Mathematics Challenge (Years 9-11) remotely, with students sitting the competition at home, online. All Year 12 mathematicians and a handful of Year 13 mathematicians took part in the UKMT Senior Mathematics Challenge in school, with nine students gaining certificates in the British Mathematical Olympiad follow on round and Velian Velikov (Year 12) and Linus Luu (Year 13) gaining certificates of Distinction in the BMO2.

For the faculty, the final third of the school year was a blur of assessments, marking binges, and a slightly unusual farewell to our examination classes. We continued to teach our remaining students and all missed the usual activities weeks. It was with a sense of relief that we said goodbye to 2020-21, hoping that things would return to some kind of normal after the summer break.

I am always proud of the way staff and students put their all into teaching and learning of mathematics and computing, but I think they deserve to feel especially proud after the year we had!

Balkan Mathematics Olympiad

Congratulations to Year 13 student, Linus Luu, who earned a Silver medal in the Balkan Mathematical Olympiad. The UK was invited as a guest nation to this prestigious international competition in early November, and Linus was one of only six students selected to represent his country. He answered two exceptionally difficult questions completely correctly, demonstrating once again his formidable mathematical knowledge, skill and intuition.

Olavian Mathematical Newsletter

This latest edition (3rd) brings readers more articles looking at a range of exciting topics. Features include: Fawaz Shah (Old Olavian) – ‘Maths in the real world’; Mrs Munday (Head of KS5 Mathematics) – ‘False Proofs’; Adrian Manickarajah – ‘The Importance of Statistics’; Tyrone Ziwa – ‘The Josephus Problem’.

Bebras

Despite Covid restrictions, all students studying Computer Science successfully completed the annual UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge, organised by the University of Oxford’s Department of Computer Science, and Hertford College. We are pleased to announce a total of 141 students received Distinctions and another 136 obtained Merits. Congratulations to all students who have participated and special congratulations to Henry Etherington,Year 7; Patrick Williams, Year 9; Samuel Iranloye, Year 11, and Pradhay Amarnath, Year 12, for receiving the best results inschool for their age group.

Computer Science in Action Day

Year 12 Computer Science students attended this event virtually from home. In five sessions experts from academia and industry revealed computer science at its very best and took our students to the cutting edge in the fields of AI and machine learning. Students were able to explore new algorithms for co-ordination that solve some of the most pressing problems in transport and logistics. Students listened to a remarkable session on the curious case of a 13th Century Election Algorithm by Miranda Mowbray. Miranda discussed how an algorithm that was used for over 500 years to determine the ruler of Venice and its underlying design principle turns out to have an application to modern computer science. It was an eye-opening opportunity for our students to see how the future is revolutionised by the advancement in computer science and technology.

TCS Digital Explorers program

Congratulations to Year 12 student, Pradhay Amarnath, on receiving an EDT Silver Level Industrial Cadets Certificate and Gold Standard in recognition for his work on homelessness. He participated in the TCS Digital Explorers Program where he received a technology briefing by industrial experts. Along with the virtual work experience, the programme entailed designing a digital product and creating a business pitch for this product. He was tasked to create a website to address a contemporary social issue and he choose to tackle homelessness. He designed and built a website along with a ChatBot using web programming languages (HTML5/CSS 3/NodeJS/ Python) and ChatBot building platforms (ManyChat/ Facebook); hosted on a Heroku web server.

TCS gotIT Digital Innovations Challenge

Well done to Pradhay Amarnath on winning the TCS goIT Digital Innovations Challenge where there were multiple submissions from across the world. He was asked to create a digital solution highlighting actions that promote and support equality in a community. The judges were highly impressed with his app Idea ‘BigOtry Fever’ and the intention of preventing online bullying and hateful comments with a hate speech detector which uses natural language processing and sentiment analysis (using TF-IDF vectorizer and a customised dataset).

British Mathematical Olympiad

5 Year 12 and 4 Year 13 students took part in this incredibly challenging competition. Special mention goes to Griffin Keemer and Maxime Pesenti (Year 12), Ishan Kalia and Rishi Tandon (Year 13) who gained Merit, and Hieronym Lecybyl and Velian Velikov (Year 12), Josh Parchure and Linus Luu (Year 13) who gained Distinction. Velian and Linus qualified for the 3½ hour follow-on BMO2 and were, once again, awarded Distinctions, with Velian gaining the 11th highest score in the competition – a phenomenal achievement! Congratulations to all who represented the school.

UKMT Intermediate Maths Challenge

The IMC took place at the beginning of February and is generally offered to students in Years 9 - 11. Due to lockdown, this year’s competition took place online, so the fact that every single student from those year groups took part is testament to their dedication. Additionally, four Year 8s also took part, having been nominated by their teachers. Incredibly, three of the four Year 8s gained a Gold medal! A perfect score of 135 was achieved by Arnav Sharma (Year 9), Harry Chen, Joseph Fisher, Samuel Rayner and Daniel Shahrabi Atari (Year 11). Sean Lee (Year 10) followed close behind with a score of 130. In total, 382 students took part, with 126 gaining a Gold medal, 119 Silver and 73 Bronze.

Students in Year 9 who gained a Silver or Gold medal and those in Years 10 and 11 who gained a Gold medal (a whopping 174 students) qualified for the follow-on rounds in the second half of March. Congratulations to everyone for a fantastic performance.

Ukmt

Well done to the 30 students who took part in the three versions of the Intermediate Olympiad. This competition is usually open to Years 9, 10 and 11. Congratulations to the 17 students who gained a Merit, especially Shaurya Mehta (Year 8 – medal winner), Arnav Sharma (Year 9 – medal and book prize), Garv Gupta (Year 9 – medal winner), Ayan Mahajan (Year 9 – medal winner), Ray Keemer (Year 10 – medal winner), Harry Chen (Year 11 – medal and book prize) and George Anderton (Year 11 – medal winner). All these individuals also gained a Distinction. Medal winners were placed in the top 100 scorers in each of the three competitions. This is a fantastic performance and well done to everyone who represented the school.

Senior Kangaroo Mathematics Competition

Seven students from Year 13 and 15 from Year 12 took part in this competition, with 13 gaining a Merit. Well done to all participants, particularly at such a tumultuous time!

Mathematics - student work

Students in 8L created summary posters to show what they had learnt about Pythagoras’ Theorem. The work produced went well beyond what would normally be expected at this stage and students clearly spent longer than the allotted 40 minutes.

Women in Maths

Congratulations to Grace Sodunke, Year 12, who was selected to attend a residential organised by Christ’s and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge. This programme is for talented female mathematicians, and selection is based on students’ academic record and co-curricular achievements. Grace will attend lectures taught by Cambridge academics and meet current students and admissions staff.

Náboj Online 2021

Two teams from St. Olaves participated in the Náboj Online 2021 competition and our teams were placed in 6th and 13th positions nationally. Náboj is an international mathematical competition designed for teams of five high-school students that represent their schools. The competition lasts 120 minutes during which the teams are trying to solve as many given problems as possible.

‘Mission to Mars’

Hardiv Harshakumar, Year 12, successfully completed this remote working software development challenge, delivered by Software Cornwall. He earned a badge by demonstrating his skills in coding and developing solutions using C++ with the application of knowledge of Arduino programming and Agile methodology in a team challenge to code and test solutions, before deploying onto an autonomous robotic rover unit. He used version control software and utilised online collaboration tools like Github, Discord and Tinkercard to develop work in a team environment, simulating a real world remote working experience.

Oxford Computing Challenge

Congratulations to Harry Chen in Year 11, Pradhay Amarnath, Nils André, Hardiv Harshakumar in Year 12 and Linus Luu in Year 13 on gaining a place in the final round of the Oxford Computing Challenge.

Perse Coding Challenge

KS4 Computer Science students entered the first round of the Perse Coding Team Challenge. Congratulations to the 110 students who achieved Distinction and Merit certificates, and we are pleased to announce 37 teams qualified for the second round of the competition.

Congratulations to Year 11 students Harry Chen, Harrison Luff, Tharuniyan Kanesalingam, Callum Kwan, Year 10 students Oluwaferanmi Akodu and Ojas Tiwari, and Year 9 students Amogh Bhat and Arnav Sharma for being among the top four performing teams from the school in the first round.

Advent of Code Challenge

Congratulations to Ayomiposi Awoyemi on completing this Challenge during the Christmas break. The ‘Advent of Code’ is an Advent calendar of programming puzzles which can be solved in any programming language; the aim of the challenge is to collect a total of 50 stars by solving two puzzles per day.

Chess

Aneesh Sagar won the online U1700 Four Nations Chess League, open to people around the country.St Olave’s competed in an online chess tournament with 34 other schools and over 500 players. We were thrilled to come 3rd, only missing out on 1st place by 3 points. We fielded an impressive 38 players across all year groups! Well done to Aaravamudhan Balaji, Aditya Verma, Aryan Sanka, Aritro Dhar, Saahil Bansal and Shobhit Jha for their impressive scores.

Science