Mathematicians from Bedford School and Bedford Girls’ School joined together to form the school’s first ever joint maths society – Pythagoreans’ Society. The group of around 40 students, which has grown exponentially in numbers each week, meet every Friday after school to enjoy lectures on higher-level mathematics and work through mathematic problems beyond the International Baccalaureate and A-Level syllabus. So far this term, they have had four lectures, two of which were student-led.
The first student lecture was delivered by Upper Sixth Former Nikolai Sorokin, who is also one of the student leaders of the society along with Upper Sixth Formers Reuben Glenville and Artin Lee. Nikolai’s lecture was titled ‘Fixing the Macroeconomy’ and had an economics application based around higher-level pure mathematics.
Nikolai explained that he chose the subject matter to demonstrate how maths applies to real life. He said, “The talk went down very well. Some of the material was new and quite difficult to understand. However, overall, the talk was successful.”
Other lectures included one from Tobi Apesin, Lower Sixth Former at Bedford Girls’ School, who led a lecture titled, ‘The thinking machine: mathematical logic and its applications in AI’. Our teachers also contributed; Mr Alex Watson spoke about ‘Lagrangians and Variations, or Why F=ma’, and Mr Jerome Watson gave students something to ponder over with ‘Differentiation with a twist’.
Nikolai told us, “I really like the Pythagoreans’ Society because it allows me to extend my mathematical interests in areas that I wouldn’t normally look at. For example, there was a talk recently on Artificial Intelligence and the maths behind it, which I didn’t know about before the talk.”
On Friday 3 December, over 50 students came together for a Pythagoreans’ Society quiz, where students competed in mixed teams of four. They faced 10 questions, which each team had four minutes to complete. The questions, created by Philip Coggins, a retired Bedford School maths teacher, were based on a range of different topics from their IB and A-Level course.
Winning team left to right: Jamie Wallwork (L6), Charlie Dowrick (L6), Rachel Gibb (BGS), Lydia Franklin (BGS).
Daniel Major, Maths Teacher who runs the society said, “It has been wonderful to see students from both Bedford School and Bedford Girls’ School come together to further their mathematical knowledge and explore areas of mathematics beyond the scope of IB and A-Level courses. The two student-led lectures delivered by Nikolai Sorokin and Tobi Apesin were truly outstanding and both should be very proud of what they have achieved.”
There are more lectures planned for next term including one from Upper Sixth Former Reuben Glenville on 28 January and Mr Mark Crisp on 4 March.