Mathematics

Maths Week

Maths week was bigger and better than ever before with maths activities and performances on offer for our students to be totally engaged with the beauty of Mathematics! Students across all year levels had a daily maths puzzle to solve with a canteen voucher as a prize! The winners were the following Mathletes: James, Mark, Harry,  Khalid, Nathan, Aiden, Darren and Xavier.

The Year 7s were mesmerised by a wonderful performance by The Maths Show. The Maths Show was full of mathematical history, puzzles, magic and fun. Students were astounded at the amazing power of numbers to control the mind, predict the future, reveal secrets and much, much more.

Students ‘met’ famous and (not so famous) mathematicians from ancient Babylon and Greece, Pioneers of Algebra, Famous Women of Maths, Champions of Chance and Data, as well as Experts in Shape and Space.

The Maths Show was highly interactive, with substantial audience involvement, and left students wanting to know more about the mathematical principles that underly the onstage antics.

The Year 7s also experienced the World of Maths. The World of Maths is a unique traveling maths show that provided fun, colour, hands-on, mathematical problem solving activities.

The Year 8s were treated to a robot show by the Brainary where they learnt how to use coding language to make the robot do various movements including  a, ‘Dab’ and a dance called,’ Gangnam Style’!

The Years 9s were entertained by Australia’s Maths Ambassador, TV star and Maths comedian, Simon Pampena!  Simon’s high energy performance had the boys in stitches while they learnt about Australia’s performance in the Olympics, and covered maths concepts such as Pi,  Pythagoras, Statistics, Binary code and Exponentials, just  to name a few!

The Year 10s had a Careers talk by the previously mentioned, Simon Pampena. Simon talked about the different careers you can do with a background in Mathematics, especially the fast growing digital sector. He spoke about the booming industry that is Coding and Virtual Reality and showed us a cutting edge VR hoverboard via video that his colleagues are currently finishing and promised to bring it to St James in the near future! Siimon also showed us how Facebook uses maths, in particular networks, to suggest friends. Simon also showed us how passcodes on phones use a Sudoku system to avoid tech glitches.

The 'Amped' students competed in the Australian Mathematics Competition. School-based maths competitions don’t get much bigger than this—with more than 15 million entries since 1978 and students in more than 30 countries attempting the same problems each year. Students had 75 minutes to solve complex problems. The problems became more challenging as the competition progresses, so students of all abilities were be challenged and inspired.

Andrew Davis

Mathematics Domain Leader

Year 7

On the 29 July, the Year 7 students attended an event called the World of Maths in the Camino Building.

We solved a huge amount of questions which were made into fun games. Everyone was in a group of four and our aim was to answer as many questions but answer them correctly. One game for example was called, ‘Let me Pass’, which is a game where the frogs have to get over one side to the other without being in front or behind a frog with the same colour (which were yellow and red). Dion (the host of the World of Maths) told us that this game was the hardest out of all the other 18 games. This encouraged us more to complete this so we can participate in the other games. Even though this game wasn’t the best game, it was still an achievement that we completed this tricky game. This game was harder than what my group thought but it is a great learning experience!

Brandon Year 7.3

Year 8

On the 30th of July The Brainary came to St James to do a Robot show. The first robot was a white programable robot with blue highlights. The presenter showed us how to program it. We programmed it to talk and respond to us talking to him. We also programmed him to dab by moving his arms. We also saw a smaller robot which was much more flexible and could do a hand stand. Overall we all had fun and it was worth it.

Charlie Year 8.2

 Robots

On the 30th of July, homeroom 8.1 and 8.2 got to experience a robotic show called “ The Brainary”, it was fun learning experience that is different from normal. We got to see the robot speak about itself and explain its part, we even got to the robot do Gangnam and Michael Jacksons Thriller. We then got the opportunity to program the robot to answer certain questions and words. One student asked “ Are you from area 51?” and “ How old are you” and we also got it to come up with our own responses. We even got the robot to do the dab. Overall this was fun experience for those who like to have a laugh and giggle and those who love robotics. Oh, and there was also a robot that did a somersault at the end.

I asked my brother what he thought of the experience:

“ I thought it was really cool to see a robot in action and learning how it works and everything”- Tom 8.3

We’d like to thank  Mr Davis for organising the Brainary show and of course THE ROBOTS!

Ben Reid 8.2

Year 9 

Friday 9 August, we had the pleasure of watching maths comedian, Simon Pampena. It was a very interesting and new experience that I thought most students would have thoroughly enjoyed.

Simon turned regular maths, into something interesting that we could all enjoy. Whilst watching his performance, we could all see the hundreds of hours that he has put into his show.

It was a very enjoyable experience.

George Year 9.3

Last friday on the 9th of August, we had math comedian and Australian Numeracy Ambassador Simon Pampena come down to the school and entertain us. He was extremely smart and comedic. He   showed us his routine where we looked at the results of the 2012 London Olympics. Using maths, he managed to make us go from 10th place to 2nd, just beating New Zealand.  Overall he was extremely charismatic and we are glad he came down to make Math week the best week of the year. All of the boys now go about their maths with the thought of Simon's comedy in their head.

Lewis Year 9.2

Year 10

On the 9th August, a stand-up mathematician named Simon Pampena visited St James College and spoke to several year levels. For the Year 10s, he went into detail regarding potential careers involving mathematics which we could utilise in the future. He illustrated how harnessing the power of mathematics can be used to solve any number of impediments. Specific examples included how social media suggests new friends to us and how statistics and identifying patterns can be used to increase the income of a business.

Overall, it opened our eyes to the vast possibilities that could come with a career pathway involving maths, especially considering the advancements in technology that are occurring in our society.

Maxwell Year 10.3

Simon came to our school with great enthusiasm and we all loved it. The previous year he had shared a comedy speech about maths which was amazing to listen to, but this year, he talked about the careers side of maths. He told us about his burning passion for maths and how it could be implemented into everyday life. We started to get involved and Simon asked us what we wanted to do, he begun to make us realise how much maths was used in small and everyday situations. After a small sip of water he introduced us to an invention his good friend had made that actually got presented on a TV show. It was a motion board for a VR game, to look at it on a video was even amazing, it was a piece of technology that I didn’t even think was possible to create in this day and age. A round of applause concluded the speech and new ideas flowed through our heads. Maths is everywhere.

Dominic Year 10.3