7 minute read
Maths
Pi Day
The 14th March is Pi Day (3.14 in the USA) and is the biggest day of the year for Maths. In the morning, some eager students set off on a Pi Quest. The answers were coordinated to spell out “Einstein” (who magically was actually born on Pi Day!). Unfortunately many of the entries contained the misspelling “Einstien”, which made our job easier when we came to choose the winner!
The first event at lunch was the construction of a Pendulum (Pi-endulum). An apple Pi was hung from the top floor atrium, and the height of suspension and mass of the Pi was used to calculate the value of Pi. As Sharuka bravely held the string from the balcony, Phyllis carefully swung the Pi, and counted how long each swing took to occur. Phyllis then plugged all the numbers into the equation and we obtained a value of 3.1077... which is Pi to 2 significant figures and only had a 1% error, a huge success in our eyes!
Finally, the event that everyone had been anticipating for a whole year... the Pi Recital! This year we had nine entries who all managed to recite Pi to some pretty significant decimal places. The reigning champion, Eve Harrington, was back for one last time and she had her eyes on the prize. She recited Pi to an incredible 211 digits which made her the Pi Reciting Queen, with Cleopatra following at a close 180 digits. Following these emotionally charged events, Miss Croft and the Maths reps celebrated the success of Pi day with some much needed apple Pi.
Karen Ramzy Yakoub, Year 12
Phyllis, Year 12, swinging a pie to calculate Pi
Answers to ‘Are You Smarter Than a Year 7...?’
E, B, D, B, B, E
10 reasons why you should take A Level Maths
1. You look really smart integrating parametric equations using trigonometric identites on the bus home.
2. You’ll begin to appreciate the value of cancelling fractions - until you realise your new graphics calculator does everything for you.
3. You might be lucky enough to do Mr Quarmby’s Christmas Quiz two more times.
4. You could be the next Rachel Riley/ Dara O’Brian/ Brian May/ Lewis Carol / Cindy Crawford!! (Crawford studied Chemical Engineering.)
5. There are more Year 12 (now Year 13) students this year doing A Level Maths than there were students in the whole of the year above...our year group are clealy doing something right.
6. It’s really satisfying to get an answer after an entire page of working.
7. Because Maths is awesome.
8. So you can crush all other competitiors in the Pi Recital Competition.
9. You can enjoy existentially questioning whether numbers even really exist.
10. In the words of Alisha Godhania’s personal statement...’Maths, although sometimes treated as an isolated field with no real world applications, in fact underpins the world around us, governing the laws of nature.’
Maths Jokes
Why was Dr Stark late to school?
He took the rhom...bus.
Sheepdog: "All 30 sheep are ready." Farmer: "What do you mean? I've only got 26." Sheepdog: "I know; I rounded them up."
Where's the best place to sit if you're cold?
In the corner. It's 90 degrees. (That's a...cute joke.)
Can you beat the Year 7s at Maths?
Here are some questions from the Junior Maths Challenge. How many of them can you answer? 2 marks for a correct answer, and -1 for an incorrect answer.
Billy has three times as many llamas as lambs. Milly has twice as many lambs as llamas. They have 17 animals in total. How many of the animals are llamas? A 5 B 6 C 7 D 8 E 9
A drawer contains ten identical yellow socks, eight identical blue socks and four identical pink socks. Amrita picks socks from the drawer without looking. What is the smallest number of socks she must pick to be sure that she has at least two pairs of matching socks? A 5 B 6 C 8 D 11 E 1
There are ——— vowels in this short sentence. Which of the following options should replace “———” to make the sentence in the box true?
A twelve B thirteen C fourteen D fifteen E sixteen
Between them, the two five-digit integers M and N contain all ten digits from 0 to 9. What is the least possible difference between M and N?
A 123 B 247 C 427 D 472 E 742
How many integers are greater than 20+18 and also less than 20x18?
A 320 B 321 C 322 D 323 E 324
How many pairs of digits (p,q) are there so that the five-digit integer ‘p869q’ is a multiple of 15?
A 2 B 3 C 4 D 5 E 6
Miss Croft’s Favourite Meme!
Intermediate Maths Challenge Year 10 Winners
Intermediate Maths Challenge Year 11 Winners
Intermediate Maths Challenge Year 9 Winners It has been another sucessful year for the Maths department, with 218 students being awarded certificates in various Maths Challenges - 25 students recieving gold! The best in school for the Junior, Intermediate, and Senior Maths Challenges respectively are: Alice Jenkins, Diana Razlog, and Jemima Bradley.
Maths Masterclasses
For several Saturdays, Alisha and I woke up bright and (extremely) early to jump on the tube to make it to Maths masterclasses at Queen Mary University. The series of masterclasses presented us with some very challenging topics, which ranged from climate change to combinatorial game theory, to geometry in the fourth dimension and even black holes. As well as giving us an insight into a variety of mathematical areas and careers, we were able to get a flavour for university-style lectures, and got to explore a small section of the Queen Mary University Campus.
The lectures were all very interesting and were delivered in many different ways: some involved a lecturer talking while the lecture hall filled with eager Year 12 mathematicians took notes, and others involved teamwork where we played combinatorial games and made nets of 3D and 4D shapes. On the whole, Alisha and I thoroughly enjoyed these masterclasses and are looking forward to attending the celebration event in July.
Senior Maths Challenge Year 12 and 13 Winners
Karen Ramzy Yakoub, Year 12
On 16th March twelve Year 10 students, two Year 12 Maths representatives, Miss Croft and Mr Quarmby (as our chauffeur) headed out to Langley Grammar School at the early hour of 8 o’clock. As a Maths Feast, the rounds were named after courses. The first round, The Starter, was comprised of us having to make a 3D cube and figure out various patterns. During the break, we were shown to a table of food, but as NHEHS girls, we came heavily equipped with our own snacks. We then moved on to The Main Course, in which we had to work on one question to obtain an answer which would be used in the next question and continue as such until we had filled out as many questions as possible within the time limit.
In the final round, which was appropriately called The Dessert Round, we had to answer four out of a total of six questions in order to receive as many points as possible. Finally, the results were announced with the NHEHS blue team earning second place. Having rounded up the competition, we then returned to school, in time for the last two periods - which just so happened to be Maths!
Thushika Ravichandran, Year 10 Rudyard Quarmby
We already knew that Mr Quarmby was a multi-talented individual, but going through old magazines, we were delighted to find he is also quite the poet. Here is a poem he wrote about the Hans Woyda Maths Competition, where participants have to do Maths under a time pressure. The team were affectionately called the NHEHS Tigers. The poem is inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem ‘If’.
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and starting to panic;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of careful arithmetic;
If you can meet with triangles and cube roots and think of them without being poetic;
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and − which is more − you’ll be a Tiger my friend!
