Biocalculus: Calculus, Probability, and Statistics for the Life Sciences
By James Stewart
About your course materials
BIOCALCULUS: CALCULUS, PROBABILITY, AND STATISTICS FOR THE LIFE SCIENCES shows students how calculus relates to biology, with a style that maintains rigor without being overly formal. The text motivates and illustrates the topics of calculus with examples drawn from many areas of biology, including genetics, biomechanics, medicine, pharmacology, physiology, ecology, epidemiology, and evolution, to name a few. Particular attention has been paid to ensuring that all applications of the mathematics are genuine, and references to the primary biological literature for many of these has been provided so that students and instructors can explore the applications in greater depth. Although the focus is on the interface between mathematics and the life sciences, the logical structure of the book is motivated by the mathematical material. Students will come away with a sound knowledge of mathematics, an understanding of the importance of mathematical arguments, and a clear understanding of how these mathematical concepts and techniques are central in the life sciences.
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About this product
BIOCALCULUS: CALCULUS, PROBABILITY, AND STATISTICS FOR THE LIFE SCIENCES shows students how calculus relates to biology, with a style that maintains rigor without being overly formal. The text motivates and illustrates the topics of calculus with examples drawn from many areas of biology, including genetics, biomechanics, medicine, pharmacology, physiology, ecology, epidemiology, and evolution, to name a few. Particular attention has been paid to ensuring that all applications of the mathematics are genuine, and references to the primary biological literature for many of these has been provided so that students and instructors can explore the applications in greater depth. Although the focus is on the interface between mathematics and the life sciences, the logical structure of the book is motivated by the mathematical material. Students will come away with a sound knowledge of mathematics, an understanding of the importance of mathematical arguments, and a clear understanding of how these mathematical concepts and techniques are central in the life sciences.
Real-World Data- In order to enhance interest and conceptual understanding, it's important for students to see and work with real-world data in both numerical and graphical form. Accordingly, the text uses actual data concerning biological phenomena to introduce, motivate, and illustrate the concepts of calculus.
Graded Exercise Sets – Each exercise set is carefully graded, progressing from basic conceptual exercises and skill-development problems to more challenging problems involving applications and proofs.
Conceptual Exercises – One of the goals of calculus instruction is conceptual understanding, and the most important way to foster conceptual understanding is through the problems that you assign. BIOCALCULUS includes a variety of problem types, with some exercise sets beginning with requests to explain the meanings of the basic concepts of the section. All review sections begin with a Concept Check and a True-False Quiz, and other exercises test conceptual understanding through graphs or tables, or use verbal descriptions to test conceptual understanding.
Projects – One way of involving students and making them active learners is to have them work (perhaps in groups) on extended projects that give a feeling of substantial accomplishment when completed. This text provides 29 such projects. Drug Resistance in Malaria, for example, asks students to construct a recursion for the frequency of the gene that causes resistance to an antimalarial drug. The project Flapping and Gliding asks how birds can minimize power and energy by flapping their wings versus gliding. In The Tragedy of the Commons: An Introduction to Game Theory, two companies are exploiting the same fish population, and students determine optimal fishing efforts. The project Disease Progression and Immunity is a nice application of areas between curves. Students use a model for the measles pathogenesis curve to determine which patients will be symptomatic and infectious (or noninfectious), or asymptomatic and noninfectious.
Table of contents
Chapters
1. Functions and SequencesPreview this chapter
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