Math and Data Exploration

Biology is well suited for mathematical description, from the perfect geometry of viruses, to equations that describe the flux of ions across cellular membranes, to computationally intensive models for protein folding. For this short Web review, however, I’m going to focus on how mathematics helps us as biologists sort, evaluate, and draw conclusions about our data. Just as computer technology has revolutionized lab work, computers have revolutionized data analysis, in particular with a host of graphically driven methods for sorting, evaluating, and comparing data. The highly technical, often automated, and computationally driven biology of today makes it important to keep students aware of the importance of understanding the underlying mathematics. Computers might seem magical to students, but they only perform the calculations humans tell them to do. Two independent, ongoing international assessment programs, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), are a perennial source of angst for those who care about education. Students in some wealthy nations, such as the United States, do not perform nearly as well as one might hope on these tests. Those interested in U.S. performance might find it educational to visit the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES, U.S. Department of Education) website devoted to TIMSS at http:// nces.ed.gov/timss. TIMSS testing takes place in fourth and eighth grade, so I invite you to “dare to compare” and see whether you are smarter than a fourth or eighth grader. The Dare to Compare section of the NCES website offers tests based on actual assessment items in the TIMSS tests for science and math (http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/eyk; Figure 1). When you solve a problem incorrectly, you can see the reasoning for the correct answer and even compare your performance to the average performance in various U.S. regions (are you smarter than students in your region?). Dare to Compare is part of the NCES Kids’ Zone (Figure 2) that also has a very nice feature on graphing that includes tutorials and interactive tools for creating graphs. I took an eighth-grade sample math test, and I missed a question that required me to use a box and whisker plot. The box and whisker plot is in my son’s eighth-grade curriculum but was not in mine because it was invented by John Tukey in 1977. My ignorance represents the attitude of many biologists toward math and statistics; if our own research or teaching doesn’t require us to be conversant in a particular aspect, we ignore it. Fortunately, several sites offered ways for me to quickly learn this statistical representation. In the K–12 arena, Shodor, a nonprofit organization devoted to improving math and science education through simulation technology, has a wide variety of excellent math resources. Its “Interactivate” section is a great place to browse for interactive math learning tools (www.shodor. org/interactivate; Figure 3) and includes a box-plotting tool DOI: 10.1187/cbe.10–05–0073 Address correspondence to: Dennis Liu ([email protected]).