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First Ever Girls' Team to Win Year 10 Cantamath Competition

Monday 25 August 2014, 10:43AM

By RedPR

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Left to right: Francesca Beaton, Marisol Hunter, Victoria Dodge, Isabella Gregory.
Left to right: Francesca Beaton, Marisol Hunter, Victoria Dodge, Isabella Gregory. Credit: Rangi Ruru Girls' School

CANTERBURY

In the same month that Maryam Mirzakhani became the first ever female to win the Field’s medal* (often described as the Nobel prize for mathematics), it is appropriate that the Rangi Ruru Girls’ School Year 10 Cantamath team became the first ever girls’ team to win Canterbury Mathematics Association’s Year 10 Cantamath competition.

High-level mathematics is generally the domain of male mathematicians however the Rangi Ruru girls have joined Maryam in bucking the trend.

Francesca Beaton, Victoria Dodge, Isabella Gregory and Marisol Hunter won the 2014 competition with a score of 95 points at the Horncastle Arena last Wednesday night.

Rangi Ruru teams across the board did themselves proud with the Year 7s scoring a very respectable 50 points to be just above middle of the roughly 90 teams which compete at each level. The Year 8 girls finished with 65 points to be tied for 9th place and the Year 9 girls finished strongly in 4th place - that team consisted of Ruby Blake-Manson, Susanna Davis, Eugene In and Yang Kun Xiang.

*http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/13/fields-medal-mathematics-prize-woman-maryam-mirzakhani

Excellence awards went to:
• 9AY – For their class project which was a Mathematicians timeline
• Ruby Blake-Manson – The Mathematics of Gaudi’s Architecture
• Eugene In – Spidrons
• Alyssa Robinson – The Mathematics of Cricket
• Abby Spencer - The Mathematics behind Crash Analysis
• Juliette Ward – Helices
• Yang Kun Xiang – The Mathematics behind Monopoly

Highly Commended awards went to:
• Abby Croot – The Sierpinski Triangle
• Hannah Davies – Sierpinski’s Triangle in a 125th Rangi Ruru Anniversary Scarf