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United Kingdom Mathematics Trust
Each year girls take part in the individual United Kingdom Mathematics Trust Mathematical Challenges. There are three challenges, Junior (year 8), Intermediate (year 10) and Senior (years 12 and 13). In 2007-2008 nearly 90 girls received certificates and 4 were invited to take part in the follow-up events.
In recent years we have also entered a team of year 8 and 9 pupils in the North West regional final of the UKMT Team Challenge.
The final comprises four rounds which encourage the teams to think in a variety of ways. The group round is the only round in which the whole team work together and in this they tackle a set of ten challenging questions. In the cross-number round the team splits into two pairs. One pair get the across clues and the other get the down clues. The two pairs then work independently to complete the cross-number using logic and deduction. The ‘head-to-head’ round involves teams completing directly against other teams to discover the hidden rule describing a number sequence. The final round of the day, the relay, is a fast and furious race where the teams, again working in pairs, answer a series of questions.
A Level
Girls studying Mathematics and Further Mathematics at A level are encouraged to widen their reading and the department has compiled a reading list for anyone considering reading Mathematics at University. Years 12 and 13 are also given the opportunity to attend the IMA Sixth Form Annual Lecture.
Maths reading list
Books are listed in alphabetical order by author and each entry includes a short review and a rating system that indicates the accessibility and depth of the material: easy / recreational (*), medium (**), challenging/in-depth (***).
1089 and All That - A Journey into Mathematics
*
Acheson, David
Written in a really friendly, non-condescending manner; Acheson wants you to like his subject, but takes great care not to force it upon you. Recommended for mathematicians looking for a spot of light relief, and non-mathematicians who just want to know a little bit more. The style is lively and entertaining, and there are plenty of pictures and diagrams. Chapters such as 'The Trouble with Algebra', 'On being as Small as Possible', 'Are We Nearly There?', 'What is the secret of All Life', and 'Not Quite the Indian Rope Trick' introduce topics such as algebra, geometry, calculus, infinity and far, far more.Five Hundred Mathematical Challenges
**
Barbeau, Edward; Klamkin, Murray; and McGill Moser, William
This book contains 500 problems that range over a wide spectrum of mathematics and of levels of difficulty. Some are simple mathematical puzzlers while others are serious problems at the Olympiad level. Students of all levels of interest and ability will be entertained by the book. For many problems, more than one solution is supplied so that students can compare the elegance and efficiency of different mathematical approaches. A special mathematical tool chest summarises the results and techniques needed by competition-level students. Some of the problems can be used to provide a little spice in the regular curriculum by demonstrating the power of very basic techniques. The problems were first published as a series of problem booklets almost twenty years ago. They have stood the test of time and the demand for them has been steady. Their publication in book form is long overdue.
Maths reading list continued...
Men of Mathematics
*
Bell, Eric Temple
This is a classic for a number of reasons. It is a one source book of mini biographies of great mathematicians. It has been continuously in print and popular since it was published about 1937. It has a vigorous prose and is amusingly, engagingly and memorably opinionated in assessing how these mathematical personalities dealt with life's vicissitudes. It probably has provided an inspiration to delve further into mathematics for many teenagers, by dramatising the life and intellectual sojourns of mathematicians. Drama, adventure, amusement, suspense, tragedy, conflict, amazing discoveries and achievements, and writing that pulls you in.What Is Mathematics?:
An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods*
Courant, Richard and Robbins, Herbert (authors); Stewart, Ian (editor)
Einstein writes, “Easily understandable.” And Herman Weyl, “It is a work of high perfection.” It is both for beginners and for scholars. The first edition by Courant and Robbins, 1941, has been revised, with love and care, by Ian Stewart. Of the sciences, mathematics stands out in the way some central ideas and tools are timeless. Key ideas from our first mathematical experiences, perhaps early in life, often have more permanence this way. While the fads do change in mathematics, there are some landmarks that remain, and which inspire generations. And they are as useful now as they were at their inception, the fundamentals of numbers, of geometry, of calculus and differential equations. You find the facts, presented in clear and engaging prose, and with lots of illustrations.Prime Obsession:
Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics**
Derbyshire, John
Bernhard Riemann was an underdog of sorts, a malnourished son of a parson who grew up to discover one of the greatest problems in mathematics. In Prime Obsession, John Derbyshire deals brilliantly with both Riemann's life and that problem, which was to find proof of the conjecture “all non-trivial zeros of the zeta function have real part one-half”. That statement may be nonsense to anyone but a mathematician but Derbyshire walks the reader through the decades of reasoning that led to the Riemann Hypothesis in a way that makes it perfectly clear. Riemann never proved the statement and it remains unsolved to this day. Prime Obsession offers alternating chapters of step-by-step maths and a history of 19th-century European intellectual life, letting readers take a breather between chunks of well-written information. Derbyshire's style is accessible but not dumbed-down, thorough but not heavy-handed. This is among the best popular treatments of an obscure mathematical idea and allows readers to explore the theory without insisting on page after page of formulae.Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imagined History of Algebra
**
In this elegantly-written and engaging book, John Derbyshire gives expert form to the beauty and mystery of the most abstract of mathematical disciplines: algebra. Derbyshire brings to life the cast of extraordinary and bold historical characters each of whom, though the centuries and across the world, played a role in its genesis: the ancient father of algebra, Diophantus; the dashing, romantic Evariste Galois, who developed algebra to ever higher levels of abstraction, fell in unrequited love and died, age twenty, in a pistol-duel at dawn; and the dazzling and tragic Hypatia, probably the only mathematician in history to be skinned alive by an angry mob. Far from being dry or irrelevant pursuits, these adventures in algebra heralded nothing less than a revolution. Algebraists not only gave birth to a new way of thinking about and understand basic numeric concepts, but they also changed forever our very perception of the world around us.
