BIO/MAT 294
Quantitative and Reasoning Skills for the Life Sciences
Fall 2005
Course Description
This course, created by the School of Life Sciences and the Department of Mathematics &
Statistics for its first-year undergraduate students, is designed to introduce students to some of
the basic models and methods of mathematical biology that are not usually seen in standard
mathematics courses. This course is designed to provide students with a range of quantitative and
reasoning skills for more advanced study in the life sciences. These skills will be developed
through the study of several biological examples presented as a series of 5 modules. Each
module will consist of 4-5 lectures integrated with lab sessions. The lecture sessions will
introduce the biological problem and associated quantitative techniques. The lab sessions will
introduce students to a range of software products available to assist in the application of
quantitative techniques to biological problems such as Maple, Matlab, Mathematica, etc…. and
provide students with an opportunity to develop their quantitative and reasoning skills on actual
biological applications ranging from genetics to ecosystem ecology. At the end of each module
we will present the results of simple, classic experiment showing how the mathematics actually
works to solve real problems in nature.
THE COURSE MEETS THE MA GENERAL STUDIES REQUIREMENT.
Instructor:
Paul Vaz
Department of Mathematics & Statistics, PSA 443
965-2254
paul.vaz@asu.edu
Schedule and Logistics:
Credit hours: 3; meeting on TTh from 12:15 pm - 1:30 pm, LSE 236
Capacity: 24
Prerequisites: BIO 188 and MAT 117
Course Fee required: $50 (for use of CBS Program computer room, LSE 236)
Reference Text(s) for course (Recommended):
Elementary Statistics by Neil Weiss, 5th /6th edition
Discrete Mathematics and its application by Rosen, 5th edition
Differential Equations by Edwards and Penny, 3rd edition
Topics to be presented include:
1. Summarizing data
2. Probability and random variables / Mendelian genetics and mating
3. Graph theory / optimal foraging / patch selection
4. Solo and interacting population dynamics
This course serves as an excellent introduction, or refresher, of some basic mathematics skills
that are needed for the courses MAT 351 and MAT 394 on Mathematics of Genetic Analysis.