24
In School
Maths Department
Year 10 success in the Further Maths Support Programme
Competition 2013
Borlase’s year 10 mathematicians
achieved
outstanding
success
in the above competition. After
winning
the
regional
round,
beating Burnham Grammar and
Beaconsfield High into second
and third places, the team of four
boys progressed to the finals of
the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire,
Milton Keynes, Berkshire and
Surrey FMSP Year 10 Team Mathematics Competition
2013 held at Reading in May.
Out of a total of eighteen competitors in the final, Borlase
came inbehindThe Royal Grammar School, Guildford,Tiffin
Girls School, Kingston-upon-Thames, Magdalene College
School, Oxford andWycombe Abbey School. This made us
the second best state grammar school in the competition
and the top grammar school in Buckinghamshire.
The competitions consisted of six rounds, each with
a difficult and challenging selection of short or long
questions. In both the first round and the finals, there was
a Studied Round on Binomial Expansions (part of year
12/13 A-level Maths syllabus). Students were expected
to expand and simplify expressions like (x + y)
4
, (x - 2y)
3
,
(2 + a)
5
and to find the coefficient of an individual term in
an expansion, e.g. coefficient of x
3
in (2+4x)
8.
Some aspect
of at least one question required students to think a little
outside the box. We did very well and got
26/30 in this round.
In the final therewere a total of five rounds;
after the first two rounds we were in the
top six, and by the end of the competition
we improved this to reach our fifth place.
Year 10 Set 1 with their teacher Elena
Watson. The entire class have been training
and preparing for this competition since
January.
Front row: Henry Manthorpe, Ben Dawson,
Marco Zecca (reserve), Angus Bolton and
James Dexter.
The winning team:
Ben Dawson, James Dexter, Henry
Manthorpe, and Angus Bolton, with Mrs Watson who
trained the boys for the competition.
