If you have ever ventured near the Bell Room at 4.15pm on a Friday afternoon, you will have seen an ever-increasing buzz of excitement as a growing number of young mathematicians gather in room A21 for their weekly dose of higher-level mathematics.
Pythagoreans Society, now in its second year, is a joint venture with students from Bedford School, Bedford Girls’ School and Bedford Modern School. Increasing in popularity, month on month, there are now around 80 students from the three schools who attend on a regular basis.
The society is very much student-led by five Bedford School Upper Sixth Formers: Dylan Morgan-Jones, Tai Tsang-Goodwin, Charlie Dowrick, Jamie Wallwork and Nat Lord, whose job it is to welcome attendees, organise lectures and introduce guest speakers.
Many of the lectures are delivered by the students themselves, this term including one from Tai Tsang-Goodwin entitled, ‘Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe’, and Charlie Dowrick, who delivered ‘When Maths Goes Wrong’. Bedford Girls’ School’s Alishba Khalid, who is studying higher mathematics for the International Baccalaureate, has given a lecture on ‘Electroporation Mathematical Models: Using Partial Differential Equations in Biophysics’.
The students also enjoyed lectures from Old Bedfordian Thomas Pelling (08-19) on ‘An Introduction to Mathematical Expectation’, current maths teacher Mr Deplancke on ‘Grey squirrels are evil: an exploration of Mathematical Modelling of population changes’, and former maths teacher Mr Watson on ‘Connections’.
In addition to lectures, the group also work through mathematic problems beyond the International Baccalaureate and A-Level syllabus.
Upper Sixth Former Dylan Morgan-Jones, who is one of the society leaders, explained, “A maths-focused society is so important because it connects all the subjects. We’ve had talks this year on all sorts, such as algorithm-based maths by using matrices to find the shortest distance between a network of points with specific distances between them, using partial differential equations to determine how to most efficiently administer drugs, and discussing philosophically whether the universe is described by mathematics or mathematics makes the universe.”
One of the highlights of the Pythagorean calendar is the Big Team Quiz, which is held in the Great Hall, which has fast become a hotly contested competition – this year it took place on Friday 2 December. The quiz brings everyone together and ties off the term nicely, and, whilst a great challenge, is also a lot of fun.
Upper Sixth Former Ivan Savelyev said, “I found the quiz rather challenging but enjoyable and it was great to meet like-minded people”.
