Measuring Biodiversity with Probability
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More and more, teachers are asked to make connections between the STEM disciplines—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—while also addressing state standards. Mathematics is an underappreciated but important tool for the life sciences, from mathematically modeling biological processes to making sense of biological data. The activity presented here was designed for a Girls in Science camp, held at Tremont, Tennessee, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The camp is designed to give local girls entering eighth grade a chance to become familiar with the natural world by doing hands-on research in the park. This particular exercise was designed to show the value of mathematics for quantifying and interpreting biodiversity data that the girls had collected.
Supplementary Materials
- Supplemental Materials (PDF 799 KB)
Footnotes
Edited by Ruth Dover dover@imsa.edu Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy Aurora, IL
Patrick Harless pdharless@gmail.com University of Rochester (PhD student) Rochester, NY
Contributor Notes
Sarah I. Duncan, duncansarah3@gmail.com, is a PhD candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences, Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.
