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QE won two first places in the All England Grammar School Mathematician of the Year  (GSMOTY) competition for the second consecutive year.

Saim Khan, who enters Year 13 in September, was the winner for Key Stage 5, while William Joanes, who goes into Year 12, was first in the Key Stage 4 category. QE also featured among the Key Stage 3 high-flyers, with Aaryan Prabhaker, who will be in Year 9, the runner-up for that age group.

The results, announced during the summer, are for the 2023 competition. In 2022, QE pupils were also among the winners, taking first place for Key Stages 3 & 4.

Head of Mathematics Jessica Steer said: “Our congratulations go to Saim, William and Aaryan for their individual performances and for representing the School so well. More than a third of all the country’s grammar schools took part in this year’s competition, with thousands of competitors, and the competition organisers have said the standard was higher than ever. So the achievement of these three pupils is considerable.”

GSMOTY is organised by a division of education company Mathema Events Limited 2023. The GSMOTY website states: “Our competition aims to ignite an interest for maths in a fun and innovative way for all abilities.”

Entering GSMOTY involves sitting an interactive, online mathematics paper at home. Each of the three age categories has a separate 50-question examination, with an optional extra tie-break question at the end.

The competition includes questions drawn from the curriculum specification for the relevant key stage, as well as material which extends slightly beyond it. For the Key Stage 5 examination, for example, areas covered included: exponentials; logarithms & log rules; series summation; differentiation; and integration.

Saim described taking part as “an amazing experience – a true test of problem-solving skills and lateral thinking, as you extended concepts learnt in class in directions you hadn’t covered before. It was immensely enjoyable, with my favourite style of questions being those on integration because – whilst they often looked the hardest – they often had some of the most elegant solutions. Winning was the icing on the cake!”

The questions were set by GSMOTY’s chief examiner, Professor James Preston. The papers were marked by ten Heads of Mathematics from state secondary schools that are not grammar schools.

A Year 12 team have been presented with their trophy after seeing off competition from 1,200 teams from Slovenia to Singapore to triumph in the international Ritangle Mathematics competition.

The five-strong team submitted the best answer to the final question, thus winning them the title in the competition run by education charity MEI (Mathematics, Education, Innovation).

Competition organiser Bernard Murphy, a Maths Education Support Specialist for MEI, visited the School to present the trophy and a hamper in a special assembly.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to the five on a splendid victory in a competition that is designed to stretch young people’s Mathematics knowledge to the limit.”

Ritangle is a free competition for teams of students aged 16-18 studying either A-level Mathematics or equivalent qualifications. Fifteen QE teams took part in the competition.

Harik Sodhi, captain of the winning team, said: “My favourite part of Ritangle was collaborating with friends on solving an interesting Maths problem. I definitely enjoyed the final question the most as it was a very open question and required lots of steps and a combination of Python and Maths and Excel programming, which made it very fun.”

His fellow team members were Anshul Nema, Koustuv Bhowmick, Shreyas Mone, Joel Swedensky.

For the first four weeks, one question was released every Monday. For the following five weeks, three questions were released, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Every correct answer revealed a piece of information that helped solve the final task.

Shreyas said he particularly enjoyed the period in which the number of questions started to increase each week.

The final problem, involving the pairings for a ‘jamboree’-format chess tournament, was released on a Tuesday evening, with even those who set it not knowing what the best answer would be.

Mathematics teacher and Head of Academic Administration Wendy Fung said: “It essentially involved finding the smallest possible number that met a set of criteria. The question setters came up with an answer of 56, which they expected to be beaten by someone, but not by a great deal.

“The first correct answers submitted were above 100. On the Thursday afternoon, the winning QE team submitted the figure of 0.16. MEI initially assumed it must be wrong, but it proved to be correct once checked, and was never beaten – though some other teams got quite close. It was a remarkable performance by the boys, who have vowed to try and win again in 2024!”

The winning team, The Flex Angles, worked independently to solve the questions and needed to get to grips with using various forms of technology, from spreadsheets to graphing software.

Joel particularly enjoyed the early stages of Ritangle, when large numbers of boys at QE were taking part. “Racing to complete each question first after it was released was its own mini-competition.”

Anshul added: “Beside the final question, which will always be special to me, I really enjoyed all the prior questions in which I could use my technical expertise in plotting advance or interactive graphs to optimise functions. I’d have to say that my favourite part was at the very end, coming back to my computer after taking a break from the frustration to see my code announcing that a solution had been found, and rushing to tell Harik and the team.”

Of all the teams who entered, only 153 submitted correct answers to the final question. A second Year 12 QE team – The Left Angles, captained by Uday Dash – was among these and was therefore listed among the “commendable” teams by MEI. Uday’s fellow team members were: Saim Khan; Kovid Gothi; Adyan Shahid; Vijay Lehto and Dinuk Dissanayake.

QE expanded its series of popular challenges for local primary school children this year, adding a humanities day to the programme.

The events, which are part of QE’s partnerships work with the local community, are aimed at giving Year 5 girls and boys an early taste of secondary school education.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “We are pleased to support local primary schools in this way.

“I know that our staff and pupils involved in running these enrichment activities greatly enjoy the opportunity to meet the visiting children.”

The first of the three days was the ever-popular Primary Forensics Workshop. The visitors were tasked with completing a number of experiments and analyses to work out who had murdered the Headmaster!

There were stations where the children could undertake: hair and fibre analysis using a microscope; fingerprint analysis, and blood spatter analysis (with a blood substitute).

The pupils worked to solve the ‘crime’, using the evidence they collected to build a case, while also weighing up the respective motives of the suspects.

Boys from Year 12 helped staff run this workshop, engaging with the children at each station.

In the Maths and English Challenge, the girls and boys had to solve a series of games and puzzles that ranged from a cross-number round to a session looking at composing and performing poetry.

There was a focus on teamwork and collaboration. Each team had the support of a QE Year 7 pupil.

Special plaudits went to Foulds School pupils, who achieved a near-clean sweep of the prizes, having impressed across the various disciplines on the day.

The new humanities day hosted by the History, Geography and Economics departments comprised two separate activities.

Firstly, teams were given the challenge of designing a castle on paper. They had to base their design on a certain set of criteria and follow a budget, requiring them to decide which features they wanted to prioritise.

They then faced a number of scenarios, presenting both challenges and opportunities for their fortifications. Could their castle and kingdom survive?

“This was a way of exploring history and strategy in a fun and engaging way,” said Mr Enright. “The Year 5 pupils also had to adapt their plans as the scenarios unfolded, which meant teams had to communicate well and quickly make decisions.”

There was then a Sustainability Challenge run jointly by Geography and Economics. The children had to work in groups and devise a sustainable product. They designed their product, chose a logo and decided on their target market. Then each group presented to the other children in attendance. Among the ideas generated were: a mobile phone where the case is a solar panel and charges the phone, and a ‘plastic’ bottle where the bottle itself is biodegradable.

“Our staff were really impressed with the confidence shown by the children in their presentations and by the creativity they brought to bear in designing their products,” said the Headmaster.

Participating Barnet primary schools this year included: Underhill, Whitings Hill, Christchurch, and Foulds.

Four Year 10 boys won every round when they took on other regional schools in the Maths Feast competition.

After being selected to represent the School in the event, the four emerged with a perfect score of 121 out of 121.

Mathematics teacher Kirtan Shah said: “This was the first time I’ve seen full marks in every round of the Maths Feast competition since I started working here in 2018. So they did really, really well: definitely something to be proud of!

“They worked so well together as a team; by building on each other’s arguments, they were able to successfully reach sensible solutions to some challenging problems. They knew what each member’s strengths were and that really helped them gain their clean sweep.”

Hadi Al-Esia, Kovid Gothi, Saim Khan and Shreyaas Sandeep travelled to St Dominic’s Sixth Form College in Harrow on the Hill for the competition run by Advanced Mathematics Support Programme – a Government-funded national initiative.

They faced four rounds: team captain Hadi said each involved “intriguing puzzles that stretched our knowledge and problem-solving skills”.

The rounds were as follows:

1. What No Words? All teams were given a series of problems to solve, with the catch that they were only given diagrams. Not only did they have to work out the answer; they first had to work out what the question was!
2. Four for Forty: Students were given four long problems, including logic puzzles, which all required outside-the-box problem-solving, including logic puzzles. “They were able to deftly negotiate this round by each member of the team taking the problem which suited their strengths the most,” said Mr Shah.
3. Card Sort: Competitors had to reimagine every 3D shape (such as cubes) to try to unravel the shortest way to pass through or over them. “This was by far the most challenging round for the team to tackle as it involved a new dimension of geometry for them – a combination of Pythagoras and 3D visualisation,” Mr Shah added. “They finished the round with less than 20 seconds to spare.” The team’s favourite problem came from this round (see picture right): competitors were asked to calculate the distance from A to B if the net [what a 3D shape looks like if opened out flat] were open for the cone.Saim said: I particularly enjoyed the card sort round – trying to reimagine and visualise the shapes in a new way was challenging but immensely rewarding too!”
4. Four in a Row: A relay round, with teams splitting into two pairs to solve two separate sets of questions. “Our boys were able to comfortably finish the round, with eight minutes to spare,” said Mr Shah.

Hadi said: “I’m proud of our teamwork and the dedication we showed on the day,” while his teammate Saim added: “The Maths Feast was a fantastic opportunity; the problem-solving and lateral thinking the rounds called for was a refreshing invigorating experience.”

Year 12’s Shankar Vallinayagam took his place on the stage alongside professional mathematicians as a speaker at the 2022 Maths Fest.

Shankar was among 45 Year 12 mathematicians from QE to attend the annual series of lectures at The Royal Institution in London.

He was selected as a speaker after his video submission for a related Mathematics competition – the Maths Slam – was picked as one of the winning entries by the judges. He was one of four winners who gave presentations on the day.

Mathematics teacher Kirtan Shah said: “I know that many of our boys not only enjoyed the day, but also really relished the opportunity to learn about fascinating aspects of maths and its applications in the real world. As one of our students, Haipei Jiang, put it afterwards ‘It was great to be in an environment where so many other students appreciated really cool maths.’”

As in previous years, the day was chaired by Mathematics YouTuber and ‘stand up mathematician’ Matt Parker.

The day began with Professor Jennifer Rogers, Vice President for Statistical Research and Consultancy at PHASTAR, the London-based international biometrics contract research organisation, giving a talk on Stats to Save the World. As the lead statistician on a treatment trial for Covid-19, she  explained the importance of sample size for clinical trials and the factors which help to determine how large a sample size should be.

Next was internet mathematician and public speaker James Grime, who talked about hidden Mathematics behind the digital world, from looking at how wifi signals are communicated to how cryptanalysis was used to break codes from Germany’s Lorenz cipher machines during World War II.

Host Matt Parker explained that our brains naturally think of numbers using a logarithmic scale, yet the modern world uses a linear system of numbers – which can easily confuse people in understanding how big large numbers actually are.

Puzzle expert and author Rob Eastaway looked at ‘fairness’ and ‘guilt’, telling the audience that chimpanzees have been seen to grasp the concept of fairness, refusing a treat if they felt they were receiving preferential treatment over their fellow chimps.

Mathematics teacher and examinations expert Nicole Cozens shared her top five tips for exam success from her experience of marking papers for 15 years, starting with: Always quote the formula first when using it in a question – this is to show the examiner that you know the formula, even if you end up making a mistake in how you use it.

Ben Sparks, musician and star of the educational YouTube channel, Numberphile, ended the day by explaining the Mathematics of the notes in an octave and sharing how sine waves, trigonometry and complex numbers are used to make noise-cancelling headphones work.

Shankar’s short talk was entitled The Alexander Horned Sphere: he came across the sphere, an object found in the branch of Mathematics known as topology, during his research for his Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) dissertation. Mr Shah said: “His talk interested the audience and got them thinking about why we shouldn’t say something is ‘obviously true’ in maths without proof.”

During breaks, the boys visited the event’s Maths Village, where they could enjoy mini-mathematical activities and meet people who use Mathematics every day at university and in commerce.

The boys were accompanied by Mr Shah and his fellow Mathematics teachers, Deljoo Mahdmina and Heena Haq.

Reflecting on the Maths Fest afterwards, pupil Rajveer Mukherjee said: “I particularly enjoyed it as although the talks were incredibly interesting, they also proved to be accessible to all, while leaving room for further research into the topics.” For his part, Abir Mohammed loved the opportunity to meet “renowned maths celebrities”.

Author, scientist and QE parent Dr Ananyo Bhattacharya gave a talk to senior pupils on his book about John von Neumann, the brilliant Hungarian-American polymath who made breakthroughs in fields ranging from nuclear energy to economics.

Dr Bhattacharya’s book, entitled The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann, was named a Financial Times and Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2021.

His lunchtime talk to A-level Mathematics, Physics and Economics students explored how von Neumann’s advances in mathematics 70–80 years ago continue to inform the science of today.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “We are grateful to Dr Bhattacharya, as a QE parent, for coming in to School to share his expertise and to inspire our senior boys. It is great that we can draw upon different constituencies within the Elizabethan community, including parents and alumni, to enhance the educational experience offered here.”

Dr Bhattacharya, whose son, Callistus, is in Year 7, is a science writer who has worked for The Economist and Nature, the weekly multi-disciplinary scientific journal. Prior to that, he worked as a medical researcher at the Burnham Institute in San Diego. He has a degree in Physics from Oxford and a PhD, also in Physics, from Imperial College London.

The subject of his book, von Neumann, was born in 1903 to a wealthy Jewish family in Budapest. A child prodigy, he had published two major mathematical papers by the age of 19.

After an early career in German academia during the late 1920s, he took up an invitation to Princeton University in October 1929, becoming a naturalised citizen of the USA in 1937.

In a life of only 53 years – he died of cancer in February 1957 – he made major contributions in subjects including mathematics, physics, economics, computing and statistics.

During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project – the research and development that produced the first nuclear weapons – and after the war, he served on the General Advisory Committee of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.

In his talk, Dr Bhattacharya mentioned the Manhattan Project as well as, inter alia, von Neumann’s contributions to set theory, game theory and the development of the first programmable digital computer.

Head of Library Services Jenni Blackford said: “Dr Bhattacharya delivered a friendly, accessible and vastly informative talk about the life and accomplishments of von Neumann.”