Introductory Science and Mathematics Education for the 21st-Century Biologists教程.pdfVIP

M A T H E M A T I C SI N B I O L O G Y N O V I E W P O I N T I T C E Introductory Science and Mathematics Education S L A I for 21st-Century Biologists C E P S William Bialek1,3 and David Botstein2,3* Galileo wrote that “the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics”; These traditions have resulted in a deep his quantitative approach to understanding the natural world arguably marks the bifurcation in culture and quantitative com- beginning of modern science. Nearly 400 years later ,the fragmented teaching of petence among the scientific disciplines. On science in our universities still leaves biology outside the quantitative and mathe- one branch are mathematics, the physical sci- matical culture that has come to define the physical sciences and engineering. This ences, and engineering. Scientists educated strikes us as particularly inopportune at a time when opportunities for quantitative along this branch achieve a high level of thinking about biological systems are exploding. We propose that a way out of this quantitative expertise: They generally have dilemma is a unified introductory science curriculum that fully incorporates math- some mastery over and comfort with not only ematics and quantitative thinking. multivariate calculus and differential equa- tions, but also linear algebra,