Essential Maths
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The most recent substantial iteration of this course was developed by Fergus Cooper, Beth Dingley, and Elliot Howard-Spink.
Why Maths?
Maths is the language we use to quantitatively describe the world.
You are going into research, and you
may need to be proficient in maths as a tool for describing what you work on
will have to read and understand papers that use maths
Some of you may feel you don't need to know any maths, but this course will be useful to you even if you never have to write down a system of differential equations yourself.
Data analysis
Interpretation and inference
Identify patterns, trends, relationships
Deal robustly with uncertainty and variation
Describe the behaviour of systems
Remove ambiguity: explicit assumptions
Quantitative hypotheses
Make predictions, through simulation and analysis
"If I make this intervention, I expect to see that change"
Explain why something is observed
Vital for dynamic and nonlinear systems
Simple intuition breaks down
Most of biology is dynamic and nonlinear!
Course aims
Develop confidence in your mathematical abilities
Extensive practice
Become able to communicate effectively with mathematical collaborators
Ensure you can read and understand mathematical papers in your field
Build on your ability to apply computational tools from Python to solve problems
Topics covered
Graphs, and basic tools such as logs
Calculus: differentiation & integration
Complex numbers
Ordinary differential equations
Linear algebra (matrices)
Coupled systems of ordinary differential equations
Use of Python