Senior House Maths Challenge
On Thursday 1 March, Caterham School held the first House Maths Challenge (senior pupils). Based on the UKMT Team Maths Challenge, this house event offered the opportunity to all pupils passionate about maths to compete and engage with difficult and challenging questions.
Each House had a team of four and the competition was split into three rounds. The first round was a group round where 10 questions (each one worth six marks) were given to the teams for 25 minutes. The strategies that houses followed were different. Some of them decided to work individually, some of them in groups. By the end of the first round, four teams (Boarders, Lewisham, Harestone and Aldercombe) were ahead. The second round, and by far the most exciting one, was a crossnumber, which is a puzzle similar to a crossword in structure, but with entries which consist of numbers rather than words, and clues being mathematical problems. The teams had 30 minutes to compete for a maximum 60 points and in that round the performance of the Boarders (led by Carlos) and Harestone (led by Thomas) were exceptional achieving 54 and 52 points respectively.
Entering the final round (relay) it was clear that the first place would be a close call between Boarders and Harestone (90 vs 82 points), the third place was also a close call (Aldercombe 73 vs Lewisham 68) and the other three houses would fight for the best final position (Newington 53, Ridgefield 51 and Underwood 42). Harestone performed the best in that round but it wasn’t enough to take down a super strong Boarders team (109 vs 103 points).
The final Standings were:
First: Boarders
Second: Harestone
Third: Aldercombe
Fourth: Lewisham
Fifth: Newington
Sixth: Ridgefield
Seventh: Underwood
Caterham School and in particular the maths department would like to congratulate all the pupils involved in the House Maths Challenge, as well as all the heads of houses and Mrs Dawrant for their support running this competition for the first time with the hope that it will become a classic one!
Michail Dimakos
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