Welcome to the Wellington College Maths Intranet site. You can find information here about the different courses available, the structure of your courses, how to seek help if you are stuck, and plenty of resources that might help you with your work. Staff members have their own pages, where you may find material relevant to your class.

You can also find out information about the extension classes that are on offer.

If you have any questions about anything to do with the maths department, please do not hesitate to come and speak to a maths teacher. Mr Sproat's office is between M5 and M6.

What will I do in maths?

You can find information about the different courses you might cover elsewhere on this site, but every student is trained to develop four skills in their maths lessons.

The four skills are:

These are the things that we as maths teachers think are important to making sure that you gain something useful in your mathematical eduction. Those of you preparing for the MYP will notice that they are closely aligned to the MYP Objectives in Mathematics. This doesn't mean that they're not relevant to everybody, though, and they are the focus of all the teaching that we do.

Knowledge and Understanding

Knowledge and Understanding is what most people think maths is all about. They're wrong, but it is an important aspect. Knowledge and Understanding is the toolkit that maths teachers help you to develop; it is algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus - and more things that you consider to be the core content. What is important is that is the basic skills of doing maths whihc enable you to use maths in lots of ways.

Investigating Patterns

Skill in Investigating Patterns is the thing which allows you to become a mathematician, and to become good at maths if you find it tough. Many aspects of maths are about identifying patterns - spotting that some equations are similar to those you've solved before, identifying a sequence so you can predict what comes up, identifying patterns so you can form rules; all of these are ways in which pattern-spotting is a big part of being a mathematician. If you can identify patterns successfully, you can apply the knowledge that you have gained in a variety of circumstances.

Communicating Mathematically

Maths is not an isolated bubble, and Communicating Mathematically enables you to translate problems into mathematical language. It covers being able to use algebra clearly, so somebody else can follow your work, and presenting information so others can interpret it.

Very importantly, maths is a highly logical subject, and it's important that logical arguments are complete and clear. There's no benefit in having great ideas if you can't spell out the logic that justifies them. This is what Communicating Mathematically is all about.

Reflecting on Context

For many people, maths is something that they feel starts and ends in the classroom. This isn't true. Many mathematicians feel that maths underpins everything in the world around us, from the flight of comets through space to the processing of information inside a computer. Maths can be used to interpret and explain many aspects of life and existence, and so it is important that you are able to see the relevance of what you learn in maths to real-life problems, and that you are able to apply what you have learnt in a variety of situations. Most importantly, if someone asks you a question and you use your mathematical skills to answer it, you often need to be able to answer in non-mathematical terms - you need to translate back into plain English.