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Goals of the course: The use of Mathematics as an investigative tool in the Life Sciences has had major successes: understanding of complex biological systems, management and interpretation of data, improved statistical methods, etc\dots In this class, you will learn not only about some of these but also about new applications of Mathematics to the Social Sciences including applications to advertisement, social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn and, yes, politics. MA 432 is a self-contained course. It will provide an introduction to mathematical modeling in the Life and Social Sciences. You will study examples of the deployment of mathematics in real-world settings. Another aim is to develop additional skills in Mathematics, Statistics and computer simulation. We will cover the following topics
- Transport in the body: blood circulation, breathing
- Population dynamics: food chain, population control
- Epidemiology: spread of diseases such as H1N1, social interaction
- Social networks: small world models, community identification, applications to advertisement, Facebook type networks, politics
- build and justify the models,
- examine their limitations,
- outline their mathematical analysis,
- apply these methods to specific examples.
Grade: will be determined by the completion, during the semester, of about five projects of computational and mathematical nature. There is room for flexibility in the weight given to theory vs. practice for each student.
Book: Modeling and Simulation in Medicine and the Life Sciences, F.C. Hoppensteadt and C.S. Peskin, Springer, 2004
Office hours: T, H, 1:00-2:30
Contact info: Pierre Gremaud, Dept. of Math, NCSU, Raleigh, NC 27695-8205, phone: 919-515-3085, fax: 919-515-1636, email: gremaud@ncsu.edu