Big Maths Quiz 2016 – Are you smarter than a 15 year old?

The annual Maths Big Quiz, the School of Mathematics largest outreach event of 2016 was attended by 380 14 – 15 years olds from over 30 different schools in attendance.

Dr. Kat Grover and Dr. Sara Jabbari led the teams through five challenging rounds in the Great Hall, including a specialist round on the pioneering mathematician and computer scientist, Alan Turing. 

The event also provided plenty of opportunity to discuss the importance of mathematics in a variety of subjects and its wide reaching effect on the world. Dr. Jabbari also demonstrated mathematics research, explaining her work on the mathematical modelling of antibiotic resistance. She also covered other subjects across the college, explaining how vital A Level mathematics is to study many of those disciplines. It was a very enjoyable day which, it is hoped, enthused and inspired young people to keep up with their mathematical studies.

But how would the rest of us get on? Are you smarter than a 15 year old? Why not attempt three sample questions taken from the Maths Big Quiz to find out!

Email your answers to the three questions below to epscommunications@contacts.bham.ac.uk by Friday 3 June to be featured in the next edition of the EPS bi-monthly newsletter!

1. In which section did Alan Turing work during his time at Bletchley park?

2. Can you move two matches to make 7 squares? All the matches must belong to the side of a square.

3. In the style of “countdown” using the operations +, - , x , ÷, reach the target 936 using only the numbers 10, 2, 4, 8, 6, 3. Each number can be used only once but does not have to be included. (The pupils only had 1 minute for each of the countdown questions!)