Hans Woyda Mathematics Competition Round 3, vs Latymer Upper School

A report by Mr Cullen-Hewitt

An unexpected narrative has emerged from this year’s Hans Woyda competition. In my round 2 match report I warned of the dangers of overconfidence, and days later those comments were proved ominously prescient by the arrival of the round 2 match results. Our next opponent, Latymer Upper, whom I had essentially written off after a low score in the first round, delivered a shock victory against St Paul’s Girls’ School in round 2, not only defeating one of the most talented teams in the competition but also getting the second highest score total of all 64 competitors. Any risk of complacency immediately vanished and I knew that they must have some real firepower up their sleeves. However, I also knew that there was considerable mathematical talent in the SPS team of George Niedringhaus (Upper Eighth), Prince Kumar (Lower Eighth), Haran Maruthainar (Sixth Form) and Richard Zhan (Fourth), so while the stakes were high going into last week’s match, I still felt a great deal of hope that we would emerge victorious.

Unexpectedly, the Latymer Upper team, including their coach, arrived dressed in Christmas jumpers. They claimed that it was their school’s Christmas jumper day, but I suspect it was a cheap mind game tactic designed to throw us off and gain an early advantage – regardless, we weren’t going to be distracted so easily! As the match got underway, it quickly became apparent that they were going to be formidable opponents, and a challenging set of starter questions left the two teams neck and neck on 10 points apiece. Some inaccurate angle chasing in the geometry section gave Latymer a narrow lead, and they managed to extend it even further after some fiddly probability questions involving repeated coin flips. As the two teams fervently worked through the team question, there was great collaboration on display from both sides, but Latymer had the edge and managed to find almost every possible solution whereas SPS let a few incorrect answers slip through on to their final answer sheets.

Despite building up a comfortable lead by the halfway point, I knew from past experience that our fortunes could easily change in the last three sections, and the race in particular is a breeding ground for sudden upsets. However, some frustratingly close incorrect answers in the calculator section and an unfamiliar function in the algebra section meant that Latymer had created an insurmountable buffer before the race even began, and while SPS didn’t allow them to increase it further in the final 8 questions, there was nothing they could do to close the gap. So it was that this morality play reached its conclusion with Latymer Upper winning 51 – 33, going through to the main knockout competition. Given the talent on display in our match, I wouldn’t be surprised if they managed to go all the way.

However, all is not lost – since both St Paul’s Girls’ School and Godolphin & Latymer lost their first two matches, we will definitely come second in our group, meaning that we will go through to the plate competition instead (although it remains to be seen whether or not we are deemed to be a Northern or Southern team – despite being south of the river, all the rest of the schools in our group are north of it so we are in something of a quantum superposition of north and south at the moment!). There will, therefore, be up to three more knockout matches next term for the pupils to dig their teeth into and, given the mathematical prowess they have demonstrated so far this term, I have high hopes that we could end up bringing the plate home.

Below is an example of the hardest of the probability questions, for those curious to see how challenging they might be to solve in 60 seconds!