Hans Woyda Round 3 vs Highgate

Having both won our other matches, Highgate were the only other school still in the running for topping our group and going through to the main knockout competition. A loss wouldn’t be the end of the story, as we would certainly come second and carry on to one of the plate competitions (which we won two years ago), but with the talent at our disposal it would be a shame to miss out on the opportunity to go for the Hans Woyda cup again this year. Highgate had posted some good scores on the first two rounds, but I had faith in the St Paul’s team of Issam (4^th), Shyamak (6^th), Aman (L8^th) and Eason (U8^th).  

We made good time and were welcomed by Stephen Kirkham, the Highgate coach who happens to be an OP and one of Andy Mayfield’s old tutees! Naturally I had already interrogated Andy to discover whether or not Stephen had any weaknesses that could be exploited to give us the edge, but sadly it turns out that he was a first rate student and a remarkably talented mathematician which was the exact opposite of what I had been hoping to hear. The match kicked off, as ever, with the starter questions, and the first two gave us an early lead, with Issam and Shyamak demonstrating a superior knowledge of 3 digit primes and interior angles respectively to give us a 4 point head start which we maintained for the rest of that section. This was followed by some excellent geometry on unusual nets by Aman and Eason to extend our lead to 8 points in time for the mental arithmetic, where some impressive probability calculations on the results of multiple dice throws (helped in no small part by some DnD familiarity on our side!) widened the gap to 10.

The team question concerned a function which gave the median of the divisors of its input; an unusual formulation which nevertheless was very successfully tackled by both sides. After a quick pit stop for some sandwiches and drinks we pressed on to the calculator section, which involved some fiddly conversions between metres, yards, pounds and dollars, and while Highgate were caught out by the confusing details given in the questions SPS managed a clean sweep of all four, bringing our total lead at this stage up to 20 points. The median-of-the-divisors function reared its head again for the algebra and calculus section, where a small slip allowed Highgate to regain some ground, but with a 17 point lead the match was already won before the race began. Highgate regained some face by tying SPS in the final section, but ultimately we sailed through to the main knockout competition with a final score of 58 – 41.

- Mr Cullen Hewitt

Below is a question which stumped both L8^th competitors; could you solve it in just a minute?