Year 13 Revision (on Study Leave)

Dear Year 13.

On Friday 1st June you "leave school" and are officially on study leave!   You are of course welcome to come and see us right up until the exam to get any help and support you want and need.  You're welcome to come and see us after the exam for a gossip too!

Here is our Year 13 / frees schedule. You are welcome any time, but at these times we are definitely available.




Don't forget you can also follow @JBSMaths on twitter for help over half term...

Junior Maths Challenge Results

Congratulations again to everyone of the 130 students that took part in last month’s Junior Maths Challenge.  Congratulations also to the many people who had a go at some of the questions though this blog.  The questions are still there so if you want to see how you would do on some of these challenging questions aimed at year 7 and 8 you still can!

The results came in last week, and so here are our most notable individual results...

Best In School: - Joe Packer (Year 8 Lansdown), who achieved a Gold award.

Also in Year 8, Gold certificates go to Megan Luschover (Shelbourne) and Mitchell Perrett (Lansdown).

Silver certificates in Year 8 go to Will Baguley (Lansdown), Oliver Bashford (Shelbourne), and Caleb Golding (Fitzmaurice).

Bronze certificates in year 8 go to ... 

Tom	Dean		Shelbourne
Jacob	Hurst		Fitzmaurice
Ned	Fellenor		Shelbourne
Katie	Reed		Lansdown
Emily	Bradfield		Fitzmaurice
Eloise	Holmes		Fitzmaurice
Harvey	Austin		Kerry
Tia	Reeves		Kerry
Charlotte	Davies		Shelbourne
Jack	Warren		Lansdown
George	Bowman		Kerry
Olivia	Cooper		Shelbourne
Emma	Reed		Lansdown
Callum	Glen		Lansdown

In Year 7 Jack Broadhead (Fitzmaurice) won best in year, and a silver certificate.  Rhys Brennan (Lansdown), and Harley House (Fitzmaurice) also achieved Silvers.  

Bronze certificates go to

Molly	Boswell	Shelbourne
Jesse	Bryant	Lansdown

As well as the individual successes above, this is a house competition, with every single student contributing to house points.  Here are the overall house scores.

Congratulations all around!

Game Theory

Everybody plays games, but did you know there is a whole area of maths dedicated to the theory of playing games? You can have a look at the Wikipedia entry for it here, but be warned, it gets quite complicated!

One of the most famous (and easiest to follow) examples of Game theory is called "The Prisoners Dilemma", and it goes a bit like this...

There are two prisoners, that the police strongly suspect of both being guilty of a serious crime, but they cannot quite prove it.  In order to get to the bottom of things, they keep the two prisoners seperate, there is no way for them to communicate.

They then get the two prisoners to confess, by offering them a deal.  The offer goes..

"If you confess, you will get a lighter sentence of 1 year.  Your partner in crime will get the maximum sentence of 5 years, as they have not confessed".  The criminal knows that if they both keep quiet, they will get a much lighter 2 year sentence as the police will not be able to pin anything on them.  He also know that if he keeps quiet and his friend confesses, then he will get 5 years while his friend only gets 1, and that if they both confess  then they can both look forward to 3 years in prison!

So, what should he do?

This problem has implications beyond prisoners in cells.  I've been reminded of this problem twice in the recent past...

1.  In the "Hunger Games" there is a choice that Katniss and Peeta have to make, near the end.  I'm not posting spoilers, but it involves some berries!

2.  When there was a possible fuel strike we saw lots and lots of queuing at petrol stations on the news.  This was a great example of this problem.  Should you panic buy or not?  The best solution would have been for no-one to panic buy, and everyone would have just bought as normal until the situation was resolved (which it was without there even being a strike).

Once one person started panic buying, and pumps started to run dry, there was a danger that those who hadn't filled there tanks would be left unable to use their cars, and so it became in everyone's interest to fill up!

Next time you have a decision to make, think about how the actions of other people impact that decision and how what you decide impacts on them.