Buch, Englisch, 713 Seiten, Paperback
Reihe: AMS/MAA Textbooks
A Modeling Approach
Buch, Englisch, 713 Seiten, Paperback
Reihe: AMS/MAA Textbooks
ISBN: 978-1-4704-5142-4
Verlag: American Mathematical Society
The book begins with a primer on modeling in the biological realm and biological modeling is the theme and frame for the entire book. The authors build models of bacterial growth, light penetration through a column of water, and dynamics of a colony of mold in the first few pages. In each case there is actual data that needs fitting. In the case of the mold colony that data is a set of photographs of the colony growing on a ruled sheet of graph paper and the students need to make their own approximations. Fundamental questions about the nature of mathematical modeling--trying to approximate a real-world phenomenon with an equation--are all laid out for the students to wrestle with.
The authors have produced a beautifully written introduction to the uses of mathematics in the life sciences. The exposition is crystalline, the problems are overwhelmingly from biology and interesting and rich, and the emphasis on modeling is pervasive.