Sofia wins Atherton Award for Mathletico
30 July 2024 - All
The Atherton Award recognises and celebrates entrepreneurial spirit in young women. It runs in schools across the UK, and pupils aged 11+ are encouraged to apply. The annual prize winner receives a trophy, £500 towards the next phase of their journey, and a mentoring session with Amber Atherton or someone in her network. We are pleased to congratulate Lower Fourth pupil Sofia, who won this year! Read Sofia’s comments about the award and her product, Mathletico, below.
On Sofia’s win, Amber Atherton commented, ‘Today I am delighted to recognise Sofia as this year’s Atherton Award winner for building an app – available on the app store – teaching practical maths such as loan repayments, petrol pump prices, interest rates, stamp duty, and mortgage costs. We were impressed to hear Sofia coded the app herself, and she already has her first corporate client, Barking and Dagenham College. With this start-up capital and in our mentoring sessions, I’m excited to see Sofia develop her business further, refining her product and scaling up its reach!’
We would also like to give Mable (LV) an honourable mention for her robotic exoskeleton.
Congratulations to everyone who entered. Wycombe Abbey girls have entrepreneurial spirit in bucket loads, and I can’t wait to watch and maybe one day invest in the incredible businesses they might build!
Mrs Alison Kiln
Head of Economics and Enterprise
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I am so grateful to have received the Atherton Award for Mathletico, a maths learning and practice app. It teaches core and everyday maths, including calculating meal deals, petrol pump prices, stamp duty tax, loan repayments, and more. With a mathematician’s mindset, Mathletico enhances numeracy skills and confidence in everyday maths, offering over 140 topics, categories, and levels. Users enjoy unlimited practice and a fully customisable, gamified experience. It is accessible across devices and a website, with customisable branding options for organisations.
Some main features include the leaderboard, a real-time platform where users can compete against friends and a progress report, where users can check progress and see a heat map. A recent feature is the step-by-step explanation for each question a player submits, and recorded video tutorials about each topic will be added.
When we started rolling out the beta versions of Mathletico, we realised there were many software bugs, so we spent much time and effort debugging the software for a more streamlined experience and tested it with pupils at School. We ensured the app was gamified to add excitement and introduced a presence on Instagram (@mathletico_official).
While developing the app, I learned core skills such as efficiently building, designing, and testing a product. Although I started learning Python four years ago, my skills have improved. I used tutorials online to create the entire app using Figma and have also gained insight into how to use social media to advertise a product and boost downloads by making eye-catching posts.
I was so pleased to win the Atherton Award, which comes with a £500 start-up capital that will pay for any required expenses involved in creating the business. I want to spend this money on building the website to make all the games on the app accessible to more people.
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