Old Swinford Hospital

That exam took place just before Easter, used to seed the bracket, as follows:

It would be fair to say that the feeling amongst the integrators was that the favourite this year was Hayden.  If you remember, he had put in an incredibly impressive debut performance last year, and had come out of the qualifying exam seeded first.  Nonetheless, there were some very seasoned and serious competitors who felt they perhaps had what it took to take him down, including Ben, Eddie, Macey and Aimee.

An important note before the competition began: the unveiling of the brand-new OSH Mathematics Honours Board, courtesy of the Parents Association, and a massive thank you to them:

Whilst the integrators knew of course that no prizes of any kind are awarded for winning the Bee, as is tradition they now knew that victory would etch their name in history, to forever hang on the walls of the Maths Department.

So, onto the first round, est of 3s.  Claudea was our youngest competitor, from Year 10, and was forced to immediately face Hayden.  To everyone’s delight she managed to take the first integral, putting him under immense pressure for the remaining two.  Hayden however, proved to have ice in his integrating veins and took the next two integrals to survive the scare and progress.   The rest of the round was mostly the story of the Year 12s trying to upset the higher seeded Year 13s. 

Unfortunately, despite some commendable efforts, the Year 13s proved simply to be that little bit faster and more experienced, and so all progressed to the quarter finals.  The exception here was within the only first round match that featured two Year 12s, whereby Sangasanga took out Josh to therefore become the only non-Year 13 competing in the quarter finals.  This was a fair outcome as he had come out of the qualifying exam as the highest seeded Year 12. 

Onto the Quarter finals.  In the first, I’m pretty sure Hayden took less time to dispatch of Arno than it took me to write this sentence, showcasing his tried-and-true classic method of  ‘just write the correct answer immediately with absolutely no working’, that he is known for.  Ben and Will had a great battle in their match, being given some really tough integrals (clearly, neither were expecting reverse quotient rule), but both applying themselves to them admirably.  Ben would take victory by a hair.  This would also be the end of Sangasanga, as Eddie took him out 2-0, whilst taking the liberty of correcting an alleged mathematical mistake that I’d made whilst he was at it. 

The pick of the quarter final matches though was Aimee vs. Macey.  After splitting the first two integrals, which involved some very quick log laws and a rogue modulus integral, the score was 1-1 going into the decider.  This was a trigonometric integral and Macey spotted the necessary simplifications in double quick time to arrive at his answer of cot x.  Unfortunately, he had made just one basic sign error, as the correct answer was -cot x.  What followed was perhaps the greatest moment of this reporter's career so far.  Everyone in the room bore witness to a young man, knowing deep down that Aimee was not going to make the same basic error, experiencing all five stages of grief within 30 seconds.  Initially, there was denial, as he tried to change his circled answer, despite knowing that this was a flagrant breaking of the rules.  We then saw anger, as he banged himself up against the wall, furious with his mistake.  Bargaining came next, wondering whether Aimee’s time could be cut shorter (it couldn’t).  Then, as his body slowly slid down the wall and onto the floor, we saw depression grip him:

Finally, as he turned around to look at Aimee’s board and saw the correct answer, he had no choice but to reach acceptance, offering a handshake and rejoin the audience.

The semifinals were now upon us, and we would now be in best of 5s.  Aimee vs Hayden first.  The first integral combined a double log answer contained within some trigonometric functions, and Aimee apparently decided to just activate full Hayden mode and simply wrote the complete and correct answer on the board almost immediately, only to doubt herself and not circle it, leaving Hayden to reach the same conclusion 10 seconds later, and steal the integral.  Aimee would not recover from this, and Hayden took the round 3-0. 

The second semifinal though was what we had all gotten out of bed for.  We were about to witness the titanic battle of the Olivers: Eddie vs Ben.  We should have honestly streamed it on pay per view.  The first integral was an absolutely disgusting trig substitution which, whilst Ben got extraordinarily close to getting, neither got fully correct.  After another two integrals the score was still even, meaning that we would essentially be in integral sudden death: next to integrate correctly would be the winner.  This, however, was when the 12:00pm bell went off for period 4 and the end of our lesson.   We thus decided to pause proceedings, agreeing to reconvene at lunch time, as we all had actual lessons to go to/teach…

An hour and a half later, the deciding integral was a straightforward double DOTS factorisation into a binomial expansion.  Both knew immediately what to do, it would just be a case of who could get it done fastest.  By a matter of seconds, Ben would win the race and book his place in the final.

Into the final we went.  The integrals, which had been ramping up all competition, would now be by far the hardest integrals ever seen at the Integration Bee.  Hayden had saved his best until last.  In what was almost undoubtably the most impressive exhibition of integration ever seen in the history of this competition, he would take the final with a 3-0 whitewash.  Ben had the right ideas throughout but simply could not untangle the complexity of the integrals fast enough to truly compete.

Hayden only had two comments upon victory.  First, he demanded to see the remaining two final integrals, so that he could take them on too, before then asking when he could return to OSH next year for the ‘Champion of Champions’ Bee.  You see, next year we will crown our 4^th champion, and so, if the organisational challenges could be overcome, there may well be a truly historic competition amongst them to be crowned best of the best.

Speaking of next year, we have many current Year 12s who, with more practise, and after putting in laudable efforts this time around, will be setting their sights on glory.  As usual, there will be debutant Year 12s looking to make their mark, integrating with nothing to lose.  We are still waiting on our first female champion, although I personally do not think the wait will be too much longer.

And the winner:

Mr. R. Drew