Citizen 10th December 2010 - the City of London School

Friday December 10 2010
Goodbye Jack!
Mr Griffin Second Master
At the end of term we will be saying
goodbye to Mr Jack Paxton, our GAP year
student from Australia, who has been with
us for the past twelve months. We thank
him for the work he has done and wish him
well for the future.
In January we will be welcoming his
successor Mr Will Mackenzie, also from
“Down Under”. I fear the temperature
difference may well take him by surprise!
He is looking for accommodation from
the end of January. If any parent would be
prepared to offer this, he would be most
grateful.
Please let me know (gsg@clsb.org.uk) and
I will pass on the details to Will when he
arrives. Many thanks.
Page 5
School news
Mahnoud Ghanem 4B Citizen Reporter
Last week central London was sprinkled with a festive dusting of snow, enough to
cause tube disruptions for those coming to school, and no end of beautiful sights - albeit
nowhere near the four foot depth experienced in the countryside.
City demolishes King’s College School in Hans Woyda maths
Daniel Hu 5H Citizen Maths Correspondent
Last Tuesday, with snow affecting
transport, City’s Hans Woyda team of
Nimrod Nehushtan in 3rd Form, Daniel
Hu in 5th Form, Cumar Vasudeva in J6,
and Jonathan Berger in S6 travelled all the
way to Wimbledon by taxi to play King’s
College School in the last game of the
group stages. We have started very well
this year, fighting hard against the reigning
champions Westminster School in a close
match where we lost 49-53, though setting
a school record in the number of points
scored. It also happens to be the highest
scoring match so far, and our 49pts is the
highest scored by a losing team so far this
year. And in our next game, we did even
better, crushing Cardinal Vaughan 55-33,
setting another record.
Our impressive points difference (like goal
difference in football) meant that though
we had lost one game, we just needed a
win this time to go through to the knockout
stages. Since even Cardinal Vaughan
had beaten KCS 37-28, we aimed to go
even higher this time, and get closer to the
77 point maximum.
When we should have begun, their 3rd
Former had still not turned up, and it
seemed to be a good omen for us, but (un)
luckily, they found another 3rd Former
in the corridor who was willing to play
against us. We started confidently, though
slowly, cruising to a 12-6 lead after just
the first Starters round, and in the next
Geometry round, we got 3 right and 1
wrong, whereas they got the opposite of 3
wrong and 1 right, making us 18-8 ahead.
In the next round of Mental Arithmetic
and Probability, both teams did well, with
all 8 questions being answered, but with
Nimrod getting us a bonus point when
their backup 3rd Former failed to answer
one of theirs.
We went into the Team round 27-14 up,
and when I saw that the question was
simply to make 36 using as many of the
sets of 4 numbers as possible (and the 4
basic operations of adding, subtracting,
multiplying and dividing, with brackets),
I smiled to myself, as this was a game
that I often play with my family, learnt
in China, except that we had to make 24.
For example, if you had the set {5, 5, 7,
8}, you could make 36 like this: (8-5)
x(5+7)=3x12. Or if you had {3, 3, 3, 3¬},
you could say that (3+3)x(3+3)=6x6=36.
We just ran out of time when we had done
it for 27 out of the 28 sets on the paper,
and since KCS had only made 15 of them,
we gained the full 5 points, and KCS got 0.
In the Calculator round, we charged
ahead again, getting all 8 potential marks,
bringing the score to 40-18 in front, and
continued in the Algebra round, gaining all
8 marks, with Nimrod once again taking a
bonus point when his opponent faltered. At
49-22 up, we needed four correct questions
out of eight in the final head to head race
round to set another record for the 3rd time
running, and we got exactly 4, with KCS
taking 3, bringing the score to 57-28.
Westminster has probably beaten Cardinal
Vaughan, and this would leave our table
as follows: Westminster top with 3 wins,
CLS 2nd with 2 wins and 1 loss, Cardinal
Vaughan 3rd with 1 win and 2 losses and
KCS 4th with 3 losses. This would also
mean that we would progress to the plate
competition, and Westminster to the main
competition.
Some interesting facts about this year’s
scores: CLS lost with 49 points to
Westminster, the highest a losing team
has scored. The lowest a winning team
has scored is 22 by King Alfred against
University College who scored 19. The
lowest score has been 12, by Blackheath
High, and the highest has been 64, by both
St Paul’s, and Harrow.
Well done to Nimrod who again got all
his individual questions right, and we look
forward to next year when we will aim
to get as far as possible in the knock-out
stages of the plate competition.