The lockdown has given our mathematicians an opportunity to do statistical modelling of Covid-19 on the population. Tamara Oakley-Holton (Year 11) has investigated whether countries with female leaders have dealt with Covid-19 better than those with male leaders.

Tamara explained her findings, she said: “While completing this project I wanted to explore female leadership. The hypothesis I wanted to evaluate was “Countries and territories led by women have fewer confirmed cases?”. Personally, I selected this hypothesis as in the media we have seen countries such as New Zealand (led by their Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern) triumph in the fight against Covid-19.

“I chose to test the data by looking at four different criteria including the percentage of the population that contracted the virus, and the percentage of the cases that unfortunately died. In conclusion, with my set of random data, I was unable to prove my hypothesis. However, I believe that this was because a few of the countries in my data were much smaller than the rest which would mean it is easier to control the virus.