Welcome to the website of the Maths Department of The North London Collegiate School!

Reflections on Winning

Three take-aways
1. Mathematics never hurt anyone, except when it did. It is incomparably powerful when trying to understand the modern world, but mathematical ideas need to exist alongside thinking from other disciplines. 

The world is complex and interconnected. Reject bubbles of specialism. 

2. Miss Buss made NLCS so that young women would be able to play the same games as their brothers, and with the same advantages. 

Though today's society is fairer than ever before, it has been a man's world since the beginning of time and women are still woefully under-represented in public life and leadership roles. Society teaches women to underestimate their powers. You have the opportunity to lead the way.

By winning in whatever field you enter, you can change the rules of the game for the better. 

3. Don't play life as though it is a game of Monopoly. Monopoly makes you a bad person. Furthermore, Mathematics tells us that cooperation is better for individuals as well as for the collective. Why not think of upcoming exams as an opportunity to work together? 

Individual lives are full of struggle: "success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." So you should learn to rejoice - to really rejoice - in the success of other people.

Because that way, you get to win all the time. 
Further Points - thank you for these suggestions
  • Dr Lawley suggests this as a great example of a cooperative boardgame. ​
  • The lecture here describes this and also goes through maths in other areas.
  • The Maths of Monopoly is explained below. But remember that Maths isn't everything! 
  • Progress is being made by Women in Technology - read about it here. 

    Pizza Competition
    runs every term

Terms and Conditions: All year groups welcome. Questions can be of any style. Winners to be announced in the week after half term.
​Here are some distractions:
- The Numberphile website is replete with interesting videos.
- Alex Bellos releases an amazing puzzle every Monday!
- Nrich has problems for you to work on, as well as some interesting articles.
- There are some BBC News articles about maths and beauty, maths and women, maths and parents, and maths abroad. 
- The NYTimes maths blog has loads of challenging puzzles and solutions, and recently went viral with this problem.
- The MacTutor History of Mathematics is an amazing database where you can find anything about any mildly-interesting mathematician.
- Ms Copin's favourite card games are Dobble and SET. Something to ask your parents for so you can beat them at games in the holidays.
- Mr McMillan's favourite website is currently Seeing Theory - a very cool visual way of playing with probability and statistics.
- More cool consumerism is here...​