Quantitative Methods for Biologists
NEUROBIO 306QC
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
The goal of this camp is to introduce you to programming in the PYTHON environment and to show you the power this provides for analyzing data and for gaining intuition about the behavior of complex systems through the use of numerical simulations. Some of you, upon encountering in the previous sentence words like “programming” and “numerical simulations,” will feel the cold hand of fear grip your stomach, because you have never done any programming and, in fact, have tried to avoid math as much as possible. If so, YOU ARE PRECISELY THE PERSON WE HAD IN MIND as we were planning the course. We are aiming to help you break through this barrier of darkness and fear into the radiant sunshine of quantitative enlightenment. The true beauty of PYTHON, as we will personally demonstrate, is that it allows people who are not mathematically adept (e.g. some of the instructors of this course) to use powerful numerical methods and visualization tools to gain an understanding of concepts that are very difficult to grasp analytically.
Course Notes
The camp is primarily designed for those of you with no prior programming experience. If you fit this description, you should definitely plan to take the course. It is critical to be familiar with a scientific programming language with which to improve your quantitative literacy throughout graduate school.
Class Notes
M/W/F, 10:00am-4:00pm EST (one-hour break from 2pm-3pm)
T/Th, 2:00pm-4:00pm EST (drop-in/homework)
Meeting Dates: January 11 – January 22
Meeting Locations:
M/W/F: Cambridge campus - TBD
T/TH: Longwood - instructor to provide location
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
