POP Maths Competition, the year twelve perspective

On Saturday 9^th of March Meadowhead students gathered in Hallam Square in front of the Owen building. As a year twelve student I was prepped with a calculator and a sharp mind, ready to take on a variety of other sixth forms in the ultimate maths pub quiz. The courtyard was buzzing with maths fever as teams of children from across South Yorkshire were honing their skills ready for the competition. Our team met promptly at 10:30 am noting our dwindled numbers, a team of half the expected 6 was sure to put us at a disadvantage.

Upon being shown the way to our table our team of three set straight to work on the variety of practice questions strewn out on the table in front of us consisting of logic puzzles that were made to make our minds hurt but also prepare us for the coming challenge. Other teams began to trickle in and as 11 arrived an air of nervousness descended over the full tables as we prepared for the first question.

The quiz went by quicker than we thought an hour could and we soon found ourselves assigning ourselves and others questions without much thought as the announcers continued to read them off. In theory we were given two and a half minutes per question but thanks to having multiple members on the team we were able to elongate our time to increase our chances at achieving the right answer. This was still a challenge as with less people we still had to be rapid with our maths. Emotions were running high, stress and confusion marked our faces, as we scribbled down questions and answers. Yet excitement was also in the air and with each blank spot on the answer sheet marked, our confidence in our performance grew.

When our time was up the tension in the room was palpable. The teams began to add up their scores. The answers came thick and fast and I was elated to see more ticks than crosses making up our score sheet. In the end out of 20 questions, we had answered 12 right. Impressive but not matching to the 16 that the winning teams achieved. After that came the tiebreaker where the two winning teams went head to head to guess the number of chickpeas in a jar. After King Edwards VII were crowned victorious we reconvened with the Year 13 team who were also in our category who had brushed with victory, 1 point below the winning teams.

After a quick lunch in the university café, I met my team in the Norfolk Lecture theatre ready for the Sixth form Guest Lecture. The topic of the talk was counting, specifically how to count the number of possibilities especially how companies use that in advertising. One such example was how Rubik’s Cube advertised the cube having more than three billion combinations. The real value is closer to 43 quintillion. The lecturer also explained how McDonalds used this area of maths to trick customers in the believing there were more possibilities than there actually were.

Overall, the day was very enjoyable with a fun competition and interesting lecture. I very much look forward to going next year where hopefully the Meadowhead sixth form team can win.