Today we held our Team Maths Shootout competition, where six four person teams battled it out to solve conundrums, dingbats, and challenging maths problems as fast as possible.
The Maths Society’s first in-house competition, inspired by the UKMT Team Maths Challenges which have sadly been cancelled since the pandemic, was an incredibly exciting contest! A massive thank you to V Piridi for his work in devising the format, as well as writing problems and putting this unique competition together.
After 5 rounds, K Gan was declared the individual winner and won a gorgeous gold Maths Society badge and a certificate to celebrate his efforts. The other members of the winning team, A Bain, R Gadgi and N Abraham George also won certificates.
The Team Maths Shootout followed a unique format, where four person teams had to work together to reach the finals but then had to compete against each other to become the overall winner, emphasising the importance of both teamwork and individual ability.
In our heats, the teams had 15 minutes to tackle 6 challenging maths problems, with more points for getting the trickier ones correct. The four highest scoring teams moved onto a round of dingbats — a fun type of problem where you use mathematical words or ideas to create a saying or sentence. The teams who got the most correct had reached the final round of the heats, where they were challenged with solving Mensa Brainteasers, special maths puzzles with a fearsome reputation. We had a winning team!
The winning team proceeded to the finals. In the next round, the four team members competed in a Countdown numbers game, which involved getting as close as possible to a three-digit ‘target’ number using only a provided set of numbers and the four basic operators. There were two rounds, with the team member furthest from the target being eliminated both times.
The last round of the competition was a head-to-head, with the last two members of the winning team having 20 minutes to solve 20 non-verbal reasoning questions, and whoever got the most correct won the competition. And we now had our overall winner!
“What a great competition! It was great to see the teams enjoying the maths so much and congratulations to A Bain, R Gadgi, N Abraham George and our overall winner, K Gan, on becoming the inaugural winning team of the Team Maths Shootout! It is also very exciting that we are able to publish the questions, answers and format on the website for anyone to use for themselves! I cannot recommend it enough. And a massive well done to V Piridi for devising the format and putting the questions together.”
— C Cooper, President
”It was great fun to write the questions for the Shootout, and I’m so glad the teams enjoyed the competition so much. Hopefully, this is only the beginning for Maths Society’s competitions!”
— V Piridi, Competitions Secretary
Until next time!
Anyone can use our format for free if they would like to run their own mathematical competition! You can find the format, questions and answers here.