Welcome to Math 120/ALES 291A!

Hi there. 🤗 I’m looking forward to the course, and to getting to know you! That's me up above, your instructor Tim Topper.

I'll send an email like this to you every Monday morning (usually earlier in the day than this!) to give you an overview of what's coming up each week.

What does Week 1 cover?

  1. Introductions. Of me, of you, of the course.
  2. The idea of Modelling. The emphasis of the course is on what we can use math for in the life sciences, and that is primarily modelling, i.e. building and using models to understand phenomena.
  3. Linear models. The first models we will work with are ones you have met before, linear equations and models, you know, good old y = mx + b and Ax + By = C. Well, maybe very old memories, and maybe not so good, but I've found it comes back quickly as we review it.

What will you do this week?

  • Read the course outline with care, so you have a clear idea of how the course will work.
  • Come to class and then work your way through this week's topics. There are also pencasts, slideshows and PDFs you can refer to.
  • Do the exercises 💪. Notice how the bullet above started with "work your way"? Mathematics is something you do, and the only way to learn it is to practice. Honestly it's more like learning to ski or learning a new language, than learning facts. Plus, you'll need to hand the exercises in next Wednesday.
  • Start on the first assignment. It's not due until the next Friday (Jan 14), but why wait? 😇

Where do you begin?

The starting point is always the table of quick links on either the course's Moodle home page or its page on timtopper.com (which you should bookmark).

Email_01_where-to-start

When you find my mistakes... 🙄

Let me know! Really. It's good math-karma for you, and improves the course for everyone. Try as I might, errors creep in. 😔 There are so many kinds of potential errors. 😬 Typos. Arithmetic errors. Broken web page links. Calendar mistakes. I can’t prevent all of them, but I do try to repair them as soon as I know about them, so be kind and help me out! 😇

That’s all for now!

See you Wednesday (10:30 am in Rm 2601),
Tim