MRS GEORGINA BROWN, TEACHER OF MATHS

In November, students across the school took part in activities run by Maths Week England.

The Year 8s looked at the journals of Philip Henslowe from 1591 where he recorded the money made from performing plays by William Shakespeare in the Rose Theatre. In his notes we saw the transition from Roman numerals to the Hindu-Arabic numerals that we are used to today. He often switched between X and 10 and ii and 2 just as today we still switch between feet and metres or stone and kilograms depending on what we are measuring.

The Year 11s attended an enrichment talk that looked at how maths is used in different careers and the importance of continuing to study maths after IGCSE. During the talk we met Despina, a Computer Science student, who is currently working in Software Engineering. The facility that she works in runs tests on things as diverse as aeroplane wing safety, satellite integrity and how looking at polar bear hair can help with making paint!

Other classes tried out all sorts of different puzzles from the simple to the fiendishly difficult.

Can you answer this one?

It was great fun (as maths always is!) and we hope the students enjoyed looking at something a little different.. Well done, everyone.