SPS Mathematics Blog

  The talk “Behind the Scenes of Retirement Dreams” was given by Ms. French, a former teacher who became an actuary. She explained how actuaries use maths to help people plan for retirement and make sure pension schemes are fair and sustainable. Ms. French described different types of pensions, like Defined Benefit (DB) and Defined Contribution (DC), and showed how both employees and employers contribute to them. She also explained how actuaries calculate the value of future pension payments using interest rates and life expectancy. I found it really interesting how much maths and problem-solving goes into making sure people have enough money after they retire. Ms. French also shared how to get into actuarial science, mentioning online courses, podcasts, and professional exams. Her talk showed how a strong background in teaching and maths can lead to an exciting and meaningful career as an actuary. - Shlok

A match report by Yidong from Cloete house: The First Round & Semi Final : In the first round, Cloete knocked out Nilsson by 34 points to 26, despite the scores being tied with just four race questions left. Gilks narrowly edged out Harrison by 24 points to 22, a gap of just one question, whilst Langley and Blurton won against Stewart and Warner respectively. Cloete beat Langley 34-26 in a replay of the semi-final that had gone the other way last year, and Blurton were victorious against Gilks to seal their spot in the final. The Final : The usual buzz spread throughout the school on the day of the final, and a large queue had even formed outside room 220 before the match! Unfortunately, most filtered into Chess Club in room 221, but a large crowd of four people came to watch, nevertheless. The line-ups for the match were Aryan (4th), Yidong (5th), Lucien (6th), Ashok (L8th) and Terry (U8th) of Cloete House, against Blurton’s team of Haoming (4th), Aron (5th) Kevin (6th), Richard (...

At the end of last Friday 7 th   November, I met the second iteration of the SPS Hans Woyda team in the atrium as we prepared for the unusually short journey to our first away match of the season. Unfortunately this meant that there was barely any time for me to pester Haoming (4 th ), Ehan (6 th ), Andrew (L8 th ) and William (U8 th ) with warmup questions on the trip over, and before I had even managed to get through three sections’ worth we had arrived at Harrodian. After a brief walk through the site to the prepared classroom (during which I admitted, to my embarrassment, that after eight years at St Paul’s I had never stopped to wonder where the name of our neighbouring school comes from!) the team took their seats and the match got underway. Both teams had a strong start, getting three out of the first four questions correct, with a counting slip on our part made up for by a summation slip on theirs. The next four starter questions caused a few more problems on both sides, no...

On Tuesday 30 th  September, we welcomed Emanuel School for the first official match of the 2025-26  Hans   Woyda  competition. The SPS team of Aryan (4 th ), Rafael (6 th ), Zicheng (L8 th ) and Aman (U8 th ) were already warmed up from the friendly against SPGS, and they were further buoyed by the support of Adavya, William and Andrew who came to spectate (along with the inimitable Dr Stoyanov). The team assisted me in arranging the classroom into my famous Battle Chevron formation (patent pending) before taking their seats to await their opponents. Once the Emanuel team had arrived and settled into their places we had a momentary pause while one of the tables was adjusted to avoid a stream of sunlight going directly into their Year 12’s eyes (which I insisted was not a deliberate act of sabotage!), after which I projected the slides, hushed the audience and handed out the first set of questions.   SPS hit the ground running with a perfect set of answers to th...