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John Hooper Award Competition winners, Hugo Wells, Lauren O’Grady, Nessa McGarty, Richard Bowler, Colin McDavid, Ger Tansley and teacher Eileen Flanagan. Photo by Gavin O’Connor.
A GROUP of three Mercy Mounthawk students have won first prize in a prestigious national competition.
Mounthawk transition year students, Richard Bowler, Lauren O’Grady and Nessa McGarty will be awarded with the CSO John Hooper medal for statistical analysis and also bagged€1,000 for the school and €600 for themselves after the were informed they won on Friday.
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It comes in a week the school won two major awards at the Bord Gais Energy Student Theatre awards. They just can’t stop winning these days.
Over 400 schools from around Ireland submitted entries for the competition and the students will be awarded the John Hooper medal at a ceremony in Dublin at a later date.
The success didn’t stop there. Another group of students, Hugo Wells, Ger Tansley and Colin McDavid, won an order of merit which places them among the top ten entries in the country.
The goal of the competition is to improve students’ abilities to describe their environment with the help of statistics and to use statistics as a tool for making sense of daily life.
From the analysis collected, participants submit a poster they designed and produced that contains their findings.
‘Early Birth Catches The Worm’ was the title of the winning entry. The project looks at how athletes with a younger date of birth are at an advantage coming through underage teams. The three lads entry was on overfishing.
The competition is organised by the Central Statistics Office. Entries are judged by statisticians from major universities in Ireland.
Mercy Mounthawk has received order of merit awards on several occasions in the past, but this is the first time the school has gone all the way winning a first prize medal. Well done all.
