On Tuesday 2nd November 2018, thousands of girls across Great Britain competed in the UK Maths Olympiad for Girls, including Amelia Harrison, a Year 11 pupil at Newstead Wood School. This competition was created in order to get more girls involved in the world of maths, which is sadly still dominated by men. Even before adulthood, there is a visible discrepancy between the number of boys and girls entering both national and international maths competitions; the Olympiad for Girls is an attempt to bridge this gap and inspire more teenage girls to pursue a career or higher education in maths.
As one of the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), maths is lacking girls’ interests. Some speculate it is because it is already a male-dominated field and that this puts some girls off. Luckily, this is becoming less and less true, and more women are continuing with maths after school. Amelia is one of them.
Amelia described the Maths Olympiad as “like the UKMT (UK Maths Challenge) at Junior and Senior level, but you had to prove the questions’ answers rather than just solve the problems.” She said she thought it had gone quite well, but that she had no way of knowing for sure: it was all very different to anything she had done before, and much harder than previous maths competitions. However, she enjoyed it immensely and it has only increased her passion for maths. In fact, Amelia would like to continue maths for A Level. She is keen to study at university for a degree in physics, for which maths will inevitably play a key part.
I am sure she will succeed and undoubtedly will inspire other adolescent girls to follow her mathematical path.
