SPS Mathematics Blog

This week in Maths and Phil Soc, Aman gave a talk on whether mathematics can prove God, using the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing the universe, such as in the laws of physics. Many mathematical theories, such as complex numbers and matrices, are developed in pure maths but have extremely surprising applications to physics, like quantum mechanics. This unreasonable effectiveness cannot easily be explained by the atheist, which suggests that we should believe in God. After the talk, the crowd discussed potential objections, ranging from limited access to science in the current day to the idea of multiple possible universes . Many students and teachers attended to enjoy the session, and it was a great way to end the half-term.

Church bells are huge things. A typical heaviest bell in a church tower weighs close to a ton, and quite a bit of practice is needed before you can handle it safely. Church bells are attached to wheels, and the whole assembly is made to rotate by pulling on the rope wound round the wheel. One consequence is that it takes about two seconds between consecutive strokes of a single bell, so that you can’t play tunes on church bells. Bellringers attempt instead to ring all the possible “changes” on a collection of bells. A change is the ringing of each bell, one after another, once each and without repeats; if there are 6 bells, numbered 1 to 6 (1 is  highest , unlike musical terminology), a typical change might be 2 1 5 3 6 4, and such a change takes about two seconds to ring. The Mathematics The number of possible changes is, naturally, the factorial of the number of bells:   Number of bells          Number of changes  ...

With the first knockout match against Latymer barely a week old we were extremely quick off the mark organising our quarter final round against Queen Elizabeth’s School (QE). Normally I’d prefer a bit more breathing room between matches to build anticipation, but with a packed schedule of Linguistics Olympiads, Chemistry competitions, Chess tournaments and an entire week at the Romanian Master of Mathematics to navigate our options were severely limited. Luckily both sides so we managed to slot in the fixture well ahead of the half term deadline. We had an earlier start this time with a 3pm kick-off, and once I’d collected the QE team from reception and they’d taken their seats opposite Yidong (4 th ), Shyamak (6 th ), Adavya (L8 th ) and Eason (U8 th ) the second knockout round got underway. It was an auspicious start for the SPS side with a clean sweep on the first four starter questions, and a miscalculation on an arithmetic series from the QE Year 13 gave us an early lead. Some con...

Once again I kicked off the spring term faced with the daunting task of whittling the squad of 12 Hans Woyda competitors down to a final team of 4 to take on the knockout rounds in pursuit of the coveted Hans Woyda trophy. The selection tests were hotly contested, even requiring a tie-breaker question in the case of the U8 th s, but eventually Yidong (4 th ), Shyamak (6 th ), Adavya (L8 th ) and Eason (U8 th ) emerged as the best of the best. Their first match for this stage of the competition took place last Friday, with a home fixture against Latymer Upper School.  As the Latymer side took their seats I was buoyed by the sight of the best audience we have ever had for a Hans Woyda match courtesy of Dr Stoyanov and Mr Morris’ after-school problem solving group. Any fears of disruption from the back were unfounded and they were remarkably respectful throughout; indeed, the only sounds they made during the questions were scribbling noises as they attempted to find the answers them...