There is an urgent need to reform how we introduce math to beginning students in Life Sciences. The usual “Calculus for Life Sciences”, which is a watered down version of Calculus I, possibly including some trivial biological examples, has failed to inspire students. Even worse, the math gateway courses into the life sciences serve as powerful filters keeping women and underrepresented minorities out of the life sciences and medicine. Recently, there have been calls, from all the leading voices in US biology and medicine, for a new approach to mathematics for biology.
We designed such a course, and are currently teaching it to ~2500 students/year at UCLA, which introduces students, on day 1, to the concept of modeling a system that has multiple interacting variables and nonlinear relations. The student quickly learns that models give rise to ‘change equations’, that tell you, at any point in state space, where to head and how fast. Throughout, there is a strong emphasis on biological applications of these concepts, such as bistability (“biological switches”), feedback behaviors in physiology and ecology, qualitative changes in system behavior (i.e. bifurcations) and oscillations in, for example, insulin and glucose levels and in biological populations.
