King's own UKMT Style Senior Team Maths Challenge

On Wednesday 26^th January, King’s strongest mathematicians were off-timetable, competing against each other in a UKMT style team challenge.

I was very excited for the UKMT Regional Finals in the Autumn. With such strong mathematicians in both our Upper and Lower 6^th Forms, I was quietly optimistic that we had a strong chance of winning the event and qualifying for the National Finals. This event was sadly cancelled due to the pandemic, however, it was important to all the staff in the Maths Department that our pupils had an opportunity to at least enjoy a similar event within school.

The teams were very balanced, and remarkably all 4 teams had scored 30 after the first round, they remained close throughout. The final round really enables the cream to rise to the top. In this round, the teams are split into two pairs, and the two pairs are reliant on each other to be able to solve their problems, yet unable to communicate beyond handing over an answer. To be effective, the pupils are required to form and manipulate challenging algebraic expressions.

With 30 seconds to go, team “Philipp”, jokingly named by 3 of the team after the other member, were just holding onto the slender lead they had slowly been building throughout the competition. Right at the death team “Team No. 4”, imaginatively named after their allocated team number, submitted two answers. Luli and Heydar thought they had solved task D2, and Emma and Isaac had quickly substituted this solution into their algebraic expression for D3. Both answers were correct and Team No. 4 stole the win by 1 point!

There were some shining moments for all 16 pupils involved, demonstrating a lot of excellent mathematics, logical reasoning and team work. Most importantly, it was a thoroughly enjoyable event, the Department are always happy when we see young adults excited and engaged with maths problems, but with such well humoured pupils studying A Level maths at King’s, it was always going to be a successful event.

Alan Parks - Head of Mathematics

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