MATH 1106: Modeling with Calculus for the Life Sciences
Over the summer of 2020, I worked on designing, refining, and typesetting materials for MATH 1106. A major portion of this work involved the creation of 25 worksheets used during the biweekly course recitations. The course has been designed around active learning, so the recitations comprise many problems that are completed in small discussion groups.
The course utilizes the textbook Modeling Life by Garfinkel, Shevtsov, and Guo. It covers the material in chapters 1-3, as well as the start of chapter 4 (through the Hopf bifurcation). In our analysis of previous iterations of the course, we felt that a more formal treatment of the introduction to calculus (chapter 2) was warrented, including a discussion of limits and the limit definitions of derivation and integration. I wrote a companion text that does this, which is also included below.
Workshops
Modeling Disease Transmission Activity:
TA Instructions Version 1 Version 2 Version 3 Version 4
Supplementary Calculus Notes
A more formal treatment of introductory calculus, these notes are meant to be a companion to chapter 2 of Modeling Life. They motivate calculus, and present the definition of limits, derivatives, and integrals. In addition, applications such as linear approximation and using the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus to solve definite integrals are discussed. Finally, a discussion of solving separable differential equations uses calculus to provide a derivation of the Lotka-Volterra predation equations.