On Tuesday 23rd September, Kirkcaldy High School sent two enthusiastic maths teams to the annual Enterprising Maths in Fife competition, being held this year at Glenwood High School.
Our teams consisted of two S3 and two S4 pupils, and were accompanied by a helpful S6 student, who took on the role of one of the supervisors at the event. Like last year, we carpooled with our neighbours, St Andrews High School, doing our bit to save the planet and make connections from around the community in the process.
The day started with a Team Challenge, where we had to bring all our brains together to decide the best way to go about solving 12 different problems. We shared the problems between us according to skill sets, and double checked each others’ working before we handed our answer sheet in after 40 minutes of hard work.
Next was the speed round, where we had to work our way round the room and face different challenges. We had to think fast and trust our instincts on this one, as we only had 10 minutes at each station! It was difficult, having the added layer of time pressure to compete with!
After a quick lunch, it was on to the head-to-head games round. We had been practising for these games during lunchtime sessions for the weeks leading up to the event, but it was clear the other schools had been practising too! We were playing maths games against other schools, like “pick up sticks” and “make 15”, with a clear mathematical theme. It was all about working out a winning strategy.
The last round was the relay race, where we had to split our teams in half and sit at opposite sides of the hall. We took it in turns to answer questions, then race across the hall to deliver the next question to the other half of our team. Thank goodness we took our running shoes!
Throughout the day, the teachers and supervisors had been judging the posters we made for the poster competition, with the theme of Wild Maths. One of our posters was all about the beach, and showed the maths behind tide times, chaos theory, and the weather app on your phone. The other poster displayed our team having a picnic, with Fibonacci fruits and pinecones falling from trees.
The final scores were read out at the end of the day. We didn’t place top four, meaning we didn’t progress to the next round, but we equalled our position from last year, which we took as a success. We thank our teachers for allowing us time out of class to attend this excellent event, our S6 supervisor for giving up his time to accompany us, and the organisers of the event for making maths so enjoyable. We can’t wait to do it all again next year!
