Marrying maths and music: the story of Johnson

Thus far, Pao School students have received some 44 offers from the world's top 30 universities and 74 from the world's top 50. Overall offers were received from renowned US universities such as Vanderbilt, N Y U, UCLA, U C Berkeley and Georgia Tech,liberal arts colleges including Vassar and Oberlin, some of the world's best universities such as Imperial College,University College London and King's College from UK, University of Toronto, University of British Columbia and M c Gill University in Canada and University of Melbourne and University of Sydney in Australia.

Consistent with the school's mission of whole person education, our students are pursuing a perse range of interests, from maths, science, economics and business, to film, music composition, physiology, geography and environmental studies. This wide range is the result of a Pao School education which has allowed the students the freedom of opportunities to explore subjects which inspire them. Here are stories from some of our graduates this year.

“How to Use a Mathematical Approach to Analyze the Compositional Style of Piano Composers from the Romantic Period of Music . At first blush,math may not seem to have any thing to do with Romantic period  music,but this is the title of the I B expansion essay of Year 12 student Johnson. What's the story behind this intriguing title?

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With Pao School from the beginning

Johnson has been with YK Pao School from the very beginning. His mother attended a meeting introducing the school in 2007 and was impressed with our unique whole-person approach to education. It was then that she decided to take a big chance and enroll Johnson in what was then an unknown school. Johnson is from an erudite family, which had lived in New Zealand previously.

Upon returning to China, the family struggled to find the right educational environment for Johnson. In his mother's view, a good education should cultivate a child's character, while also enriching the child's knowledge and contributing towards his/her overall development. That's a key reason she was so impressed by the slogan of Mr. Y K P a o - "Exercise daily,Use sparingly, Work diligently."

The commitment from the founders in a not-for-profit education strengthened the family’s faith in the school. And now, 12 years later, Johnson's mom is even more impressed by the fact that Y K P a o School has stayed true to its founding spirit all these years even as it has grown much larger.

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A mathematician and music

At P a o School's 10th anniversary concert in 2017, Johnson lent his extensive musical talents to the celebration. He not only played piano in a 16-handed rendition of Ga lop Mar h é, he also served as the second violinist in the orchestra as they performed Bach's Branden burg Concer to No.3 in G Major,B W V 1048: I .Allegro Moderato.

Even during the busy college application season, Johnson still found time to participate in the International Schools Choral Music Society Festival in Jan. 2019.First row from left, Johnson Du Johnson studied I B music S L with Dawn Morris. She calls him a “great piano player” and a “good singer with a nice voice”.

His perfect pitch gives him the ability listen, and pick up things and analyze them. (Perfect Pitch ,a rare auditory phenomenon characterized by the ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone.)

Ms. Sun Jingjing, Johnson’s Y1 homeroom techer, recalls fondly of the founding years. Until now, she enjoys frequent contacts and visits from the students she taught all those years ago. She did not, however, initially realize Johnson's immense musical talent. Looking back on her experience teaching Johnson all those years ago, Ms. Sun is frankly surprised her did not see Johnson's musical abilities earlier on.Johnson DuYear 1 Johnson's mother says that YK Pao School has helped cultivate his budding musical talent.

Johnson began learning piano in kindergarten, but it was at YK Pao School that he discovered his passion for music and performing on live in front of an audience. He drew inspiration from the stage performances that allowed him to engage with the audience. Johnson learned the violin in addition to the piano, and regularly performing as both a pianist and violinist. Johnson is passionate about music and thinks playing music relaxes him. That is why even as a busy high school student, he participated in not one, but five performances in the 10 Year Anniversary Concert.

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Confident and caring Teacher Sun looks back on her time teaching Johnson, and recalls that the boy had a curious mind and was full of ideas, but was often hesitant to participate in class. She realized that young Johnson was concerned about making mistakes.

She then took the opportunity to teach Johnson that making mistake is actually an opportunity to learn.

Thanks to such positive support from teachers like Ms. Sun and his parents, Johnson gradually changed from a boy who silently listened to the opinions of others into a self-confident and independent high  school graduate. Johnson's mother comments:"When he applied to university,he did soon his own terms.He perused the different schools and decided where he wanted to apply and how he would put together the applications. We respected his choices."

Because of Johnson's outstanding math skills, his classmates often sought his assistance on tough assignments, even calling him when he is home on the weekend.He always was willing to help them out, carefully answering their questions and helping them to not just get the right answer, but more importantly to understand how the right answer was derived.

Reflecting on this experience, Johnson says that he was able to learn something new from explaining those math problems to his classmates.

He saw the problems from a different perspective.Mathematician loves research.

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During Year 11, Johnson participated in the High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling (HiMCM), earning honorable mention. The competition requires participants to design the flight path of aircraft for the city lighting show, taking into account safety, feasibility, and aesthetics.

Johnson and his team members used geometric functional formulas and integral area formulas to design a strong light show aircraft flight path solution. Says Johnson's math teacher Mr. Peter Mc Com be:

"Johnson is talented, hard working and persistent. He doesn't allow setbacks to dull his enthusiasm for his studies, and he always pulls through in the end."Johnson loves mathematics, especially statistics. He believes that statistics is the most practical and powerful type of applied mathematics. However, he found that in Maths H L at Pao School, the focus was on calculus only.Undeterred, Johnson decided he would teach himself statistics.

He applied his love of statistics to the study of music chords and wrote original creative essays on the subject.“Each chord has its corresponding consonance level.By assigning numbers to represent each consonance level, statistical analysis could be applied to describe the unique pattern of each composer. The research focuses on describing the composition style of composers based on their most frequently used chords. —— Johnson”

Over the past 12 years, Johnson and his mother have found that they made the right decision en rolling him at Y K P a o School. During these 12 years, Johnsonhasgrownbyleapsandbounds.Hemayhaveoncebeentimidandunsureofhimself,but today he is confident, independent, caring and strong.

HisexperienceatPaoSchoolhasbeenextraordinarilyrich:Notonlyhasheexcelledacademically, but also he has become an accomplished pianist and violinist, and made many dear friends. Johnson has received an admissions offer from the University of California at Berkeley and is interested in working in the field of statistics. Stay tuned for more exciting stories about the Class of 2019！