Bio Majors: Is Math Usage Intense or Not?

[torquemada]

my one misgiving about majoring in bio is i feel it's a memorization science and I'm betraying my mathematical mind. granted I'm only taking intro courses atm - does it get math heavy? or not really? and is it only statistics that biologists use, or do they use calculus or other math? thx

 

[chiro]

my one misgiving about majoring in bio is i feel it's a memorization science and I'm betraying my mathematical mind. granted I'm only taking intro courses atm - does it get math heavy? or not really? and is it only statistics that biologists use, or do they use calculus or other math? thx

Have you ever heard or come across protein folding?

 

[torquemada]

yes what maths are used in that field?

 

[Kevin_Axion]

Topology is used in protein folding.

 

[Delong]

There's a lot of fields in biology where math is coming in but that is more the case in advanced research. Not so much in undergraduate education. One field, other than protein folding that Kevin_Axion suggested, is mathematical ecology. I'm particularly interested in that field myself.

 

[Andy Resnick]

my one misgiving about majoring in bio is i feel it's a memorization science and I'm betraying my mathematical mind. granted I'm only taking intro courses atm - does it get math heavy? or not really? and is it only statistics that biologists use, or do they use calculus or other math? thx

In terms of an undergraduate degree, the joke is that biology majors would have been chemistry majors except they don't like math.

In terms of graduate programs, there's more cross-fertilization of 'hard science' majors into biology/biomedical fields- especially in genetics/gemonics/proteomics/-omics (network analysis), protein folding (topology and thermodynamics), reaction kinetics (differential equations), etc. etc.