What kind of math is involved in Biology/Micro

[Marconis]

I am planning on majoring in Biology or Microbiology when I attend college. I am curious as to how difficult and what kind of math is involved with it? I am starting to worry, because I love science but am not very good at math . Can you not have one without the other? Are there any other majors out there that are kind of similar to biology but less math intensive?

[NeonBlack]

Depends. Some areas of biology will require no more than high school level math(s), but some areas which are getting more advances are starting to rival chemistry as far as the level of math required goes.

I'd say biology is a pretty common route for students who like science but hate math.

[Marconis]

Thanks a lot, made me feel better.

[ecoli]

yes, but much to my chagrin, much of the biological molecular modeling requires math, which I'm interested in. Also, evolutionary theory, population interactions, all have quite complex math associated with it. Even relatively "mathless" microbiology experiments involve statistical analysis.

 

Be prepared that the future of biology will involve math. Unfortunately, I'm not that great a math student myself, even though I'm interested in all the applications of that math.

[Marconis]

So, am I going to have a lot of trouble down the road with Biology then if I am not good at math? It's gonna be disheartening to have to switch majors because the math halts my progress.

[iNow]

Not being very good at math is not a static condition. Are you reasonably intelligent? (rhetorical question ) Then, you can learn that eensy weensy bit of math your bio degree might require.

 

Better to have a high self-efficacy and fall somewhat short than to have a self-defeating attitude and prove it true.

[ecoli]

So, am I going to have a lot of trouble down the road with Biology then if I am not good at math? It's gonna be disheartening to have to switch majors because the math halts my progress.

 

I'm a biochem major, and I've had to take up to Calc 2 plus algreba/calc. based physics classes. My biochem teachers have been nice enough not to require too much math in enzyme kinetics. General chem courses will also have algreba in them.

 

But, unless you're in the humanities, you're going to have to take math sooner or later. Worst comes to worst, you may have to challenge yourself. And, if you work hard, you may surprise yourself at what you can do.

[rick.taiwan]

Many students who think they lack inherent talent for math have just been turned off to math by uninspiring teaching.

 

It may be you're better at math than you realize.

[Psycho]

I got a B at GCSE maths, which as most will know isn't great adn I am doing a degree in biochemistry, the maths is easily doable with a bit of help from your course mates to explain it to you.

 

Most of what I have done is thermodynamics and genetics, which is a lot of probabilities as well as other things.

 

If you are planning to do that you must have done chemistry and if you can do the maths in that you will be fine.

[ajb]

Talking to people with biology degrees they know very little mathematics in general. Unless they are into mathematical biology.

 

Overall, biological sciences are not (yet?) mathematical science.

 

Statistics, some linear algebra and maybe some calculus and that is pushing it.

 

My brother who is about to finish his PhD in biology knows almost no maths!

[Paralith]

Many students who think they lack inherent talent for math have just been turned off to math by uninspiring teaching.

 

It may be you're better at math than you realize.

 

I agree. The effect of a bad teacher can have rather devastating effects on your experience with a challenging subject. Math can be challenging but it's most certainly within the grasp of most people.

 

And I disagree with those of you who say biology is not a mathematical science. The frequency with which math is used may be less, but it is very important when it comes to research. Competency with statistics is essential to good research. And as ecoli mentioned, anything that is an attempt at modeling involves math.

 

Marconis, the specific subfield of biology you are interested in will effect how much math and to what level of difficulty you will have to use on a day to day basis. But you will have to learn it. Unfortunately not many biology programs these days have statistic class requirements, but I would strongly, STRONGLY recommend taking some. I never really liked math either, but it turns out I enjoyed my stats class a lot because it was focused towards applying stats to natural science research, and that made it much more interesting and applicable for me, and easier for me to learn. However, what you most likely WILL be required to take is physics, which is most certainly not math-free.

 

If you are really interested in these subjects, please don't let math scare you away.

[Mr Skeptic]

I too suggest statistics. It's one of the maths with the most real-world applications. Though not my favorite, it is basically the maths of luck, to separate chance from results. Statistics is used for most things that there is no proper (and incredibly complex) maths for, like research for biology or psychology.

[ajb]

And I disagree with those of you who say biology is not a mathematical science. The frequency with which math is used may be less, but it is very important when it comes to research. Competency with statistics is essential to good research. And as ecoli mentioned, anything that is an attempt at modeling involves math.

 

Overall, little mathematics is involved in biological research, apart from as stated statistics i.e. presenting and interpreting your experimental data.

 

There are mathematicians, physicists and biologists who are working in "mathematical biology" or "qualitative biology". This is a relatively new area of investigation. Largely this involves what you would call "modelling". Even then, depending on what you are doing, the level of mathematical knowledge would vary a lot. Solving differential equations on the computer is not analysis, for example.

 

I would imagine a typical undergraduate degree in biology won't include much mathematical biology.

[PhDP]

I started a B.Sc in biology but switched to a B.Sc with 2/3 biology, 1/3 math, it was just getting absurd, in my classes; no maths, or very little. But then my knowledge of math was insufficient to understand the theory of evolution (which is largely based on theoretical population genetics), or behavioural & population ecology (...which is full of system of ODEs, for example to understand the dynamics of microbes or predators).

 

If you try to read serious journals like American Naturalist, Nature, Science, Evolution, you're going to have problems with several articles unless you know some maths. And this is something unacceptable in my opinion; it's often easier for mathematicians or physicists to understand biology articles.

 

You have huge problems with math ? IMO, you should think about biochemistry or social sciences. There are many people currently working on making biology a science with a strong theoretical/quantitative core.

[fredrik]

Be prepared that the future of biology will involve math.

 

One field that I personally find very interesting, is modelling of organisms.

 

In theory the behaviour of an organisms is a massive systems of coupled chemical reactions, which are regulated by enzymes and various celluclar structurs, which in turn are traced down to gene expression levels. But it soon becomes obvious that writing down that massive problem as some kind of simple initial value problem simply doesn't work for a number of reasons. Just because you seem to understand the chemistry of every single molecule of an organisms, doesn't mean you understand the whole thing. It's simply too complex, and complexity does limit, so a more clever modelling is needed.

 

Here a mix between microbiologists and computer scientists are making alot of modelling, where one tries to mimic the measure of life as optimation problems, optimising growth rates and survival and so on, given the constraints defined by the stochiometry of the chemical network, which is reasonably well mapped out for many organisms these days. This way, one can as it seems accomplish a reasonable theoretical model of the organism at a high level, without detailed knowledge of the details. One focus on what natures tries to accomplish, and trusts that nature will find a way - HOW it's done doesn't matter to the higher level behaviour. This is not unlike that of stat mech. Clearly newtons equations for billions of molecules would make not sense. So we do statistics. Statistics can be done also on behavioural systems. We don't know the path of every single molecule in a gas, and we don't need to. Similarly one doesn't need to model the dynamics of gene translation and transcription with DE:s. All we need to do, is what the purposes is, and conclude that it's pretty likely that a way to accomplish that purposes the best way, is found sooner or later.

 

I suspect this field will be grow important. If you can make computer simulations on cellular and organism responses, one can imagine how that'll boost progress in testing medicines, by narrowing down the options you need to do real hassly in vivo testing with. And I suspect some numerical analysis and basic modelling skills there is probalby more important than classical biology skills.

 

Still that's not advanced math or numerical analysis. It's quite basic. It's probalby more important to learn how to to "model". How do you go about to make up a model of anything? That's something that I think physics students are trained to - "problem solving". But then the problem comes that it must also be a computable model. A model that can't be used to compute something in finite time, is also effectively worthless. So maybe it's not hte math itself, but it's how to apply it in useful ways to real life problems.

 

I think all branches of science can learn from each other and isolating one discipline from the other seems old faishoned to me. I orignally studied physics and math only. To be honest, I though bio stuff was crap and waste of time. I liked chemistry, but just because of the smoke and fire. But I have studied that on my own now and found that the combined knowledge from various fields means more than any of them alone - so I was very wrong. Life is complex are hard to predict, something biologists have know for a long time, but perhaps not so systematically. But it seems easy for theorists to flip over the other end and think of the world as a system of axioms, and gives the evil eye at anything that ill defined

 

I didn't like bio, I thought it was just about remember names for flowers and insects, but I really didn't get the point. But I changed my mind. Perhasp you similary never got the point of math,in wihch case everything is hard. Numbers and their relations are all over nature.

 

/Fredrik

[foodchain]

Overall, little mathematics is involved in biological research, apart from as stated statistics i.e. presenting and interpreting your experimental data.

 

There are mathematicians, physicists and biologists who are working in "mathematical biology" or "qualitative biology". This is a relatively new area of investigation. Largely this involves what you would call "modelling". Even then, depending on what you are doing, the level of mathematical knowledge would vary a lot. Solving differential equations on the computer is not analysis, for example.

 

I would imagine a typical undergraduate degree in biology won't include much mathematical biology.

 

 

 

It does depend on the field you go into in biology. Most the undergraduate programs I look at usually have a year of calculus to take, or heavy statistics with some calculus. Not like a typical physics degree in regards to math for sure, and still a bit behind how much math that I find typically involved in a chemistry degree but its not like you don’t have to know math to obtain an undergraduate biology degree.

 

I personally do not look forward to any of the calculus also to be honest;)

[Paralith]

I would imagine a typical undergraduate degree in biology won't include much mathematical biology.

 

Unfortunately, many of them don't. And this is to the detriment of the students. As described by myself and others here, math is indeed important to biological research and will become more so in the future.

[CharonY]

Unfortunately, many of them don't. And this is to the detriment of the students. As described by myself and others here, math is indeed important to biological research and will become more so in the future.

 

Quoted for importance. Neglecting mathematics might give you problems later on. At the moment you can in theory get a phd in bio (in fact, with the current system once you are accepted as graduate student you will almost always get a phd, no matter what, but that's a different issue) without proper mathematical training, but it will be to your disadvantage.