It all adds up for JCG girls who win big in UK maths challenge

Thursday 09 July 2015

A team of girls from JCG have proved it's not all about sporting medals - taking gold, silver and bronze in a school maths challenge organised by Southampton University.

Hannah Owens, Emma Noel and Ellana McAlister - the three junior maths whizzes - beat off competition from over 800 other students across the South of England.

JCG’s Head of the Maths Tomi Owens said: "Mathematics has a long history of puzzles and competitions, and it is good for students to take part in something where they are going to be genuinely stretched. So many of the assessments that students do can be prepared for by looking at previous years’ questions and thus become little more than a process of blindly following standard techniques.

"Any competition that requires some creative thinking is a good thing, and for this reason our students regularly take part in the UKMT Team Challenge (teams of fours students working together) and the UKMT Individual Challenge (working on their own under exam conditions). The Southampton Challenge is special because students take the questions home and are given time to prepare long written answers.

"The questions are often on topics that are a little beyond the work covered in lessons, so students have to do some research to fully understand the problems and attempt to solve them. Arguably this is more like the day-to-day work of a real mathematician than sitting an exam paper."

The three winners, all in year 8, picked up their awards at a special ceremony at the University last month and went on a special guided tour of the campus. The evening ended with a talk by Dr Nick Wright about the mathematics of Alan Turing.

First placed Hannah said: “I really enjoyed the talk on Alan Turing. It showed me how much more there is to discover about Mathematics.”

Mr Owens said: “These same three girls achieved high places in the competition last year. They all improved this year and I look forward to seeing their results next year when they enter the senior section.

"The students who have been over have had the opportunity to look around the university campus and have spent time talking to working mathematicians. Hopefully some will be inspired to think about this as a part of their future."

You can find out more about the competition and the types of questions the girls were asked here.