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This material has been adapted from material by Fergus Cooper from the "Essential Mathematics" module of the SABS R³ Center for Doctoral Training.

This material has been adapted from material by Fergus Cooper from the "Essential Mathematics" module of the SABS R³ Center for Doctoral Training.

Creative Commons License
This course material was developed as part of UNIVERSE-HPC, which is funded through the SPF ExCALIBUR programme under grant number EP/W035731/1

This course material was developed as part of UNIVERSE-HPC, which is funded through the SPF ExCALIBUR programme under grant number EP/W035731/1

Creative Commons License

Essential Maths

View Course Diagram

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