
A Sixth Form team came second in London and third across the whole country in the long-running Náboj Math competition.
The Year 12 boys’ performance in the London heat of the competition, which was hosted by Dulwich College, placed them among the leading élite of the 70 teams competing nationally.
Head of Mathematics Jessica Steer said: “This was an impressive performance by our students, who entered the competition on their own initiative.”
The London heat was one of four run in the UK this year: the others were in Oxfordshire, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Team member Vinujan Sivakumar said: “We had an incredible experience at Dulwich College. In the London heat, we secured second place out of 20 highly competitive teams, missing the top spot by just two points to King’s College London Mathematics School.”
The same school went on to be named overall UK winners. QE finished in third place in the national rankings, its 35 points placing it just ahead of Dulwich College and Sir William Borlase’s Grammar School, Marlow, on 34 points apiece.
In the international rankings, QE came 28th out of around 800 teams.
Vinujan’s teammates were Ram Chockalingam, Sasen Kankanamge Don, William Joanes and Joshua Wilkinson.
The competition lasted for 120 minutes, during which the five-person teams tried to solve as many problems as possible. At the beginning, each team received six problems. As soon as it correctly solved a problem, it was given another one.
The competition website states: “Problems in Náboj differ considerably from the routine school exercises which usually require only direct application of a given method: the Náboj problems require certain amount of inventiveness and ingenuity. Success in the competition does not depend on the individual abilities of the team members only but also on their efficient cooperation.
“Apart from enhancing imagination and logical reasoning our goal is to attract people to the endless beauty hidden in mathematics.”
A team from Poland were the international winners. This year, the competition was also run in Austria, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Uzbekistan.