The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Uses and Abuses of Mathematics in Biology
Abstract
In the physical sciences, mathematical theory and experimental investigation have always marched together. Mathematics has been less intrusive in the life sciences, possibly because they have until recently been largely descriptive, lacking the invariance principles and fundamental natural constants of physics. Increasingly in recent decades, however, mathematics has become pervasive in biology, taking many different forms: statistics in experimental design; pattern seeking in bioinformatics; models in evolution, ecology, and epidemiology; and much else. I offer an opinionated overview of such uses—and abuses.
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Citations
Cites
The genetical theory of natural selection
Fisher, R. A. (1930) · doi:10.5962/bhl.title.27468 · Cited by 17,617
Simple Lessons from Complexity
Goldenfeld, N., & Kadanoff, L. P. (1999) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.284.5411.87 · Cited by 554
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Csilléry, K., Blum, M. G. B., Gaggiotti, O. E., & François, O. (2010) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2010.04.001 · Cited by 1,302
The Hidden Geometry of Complex, Network-Driven Contagion Phenomena
Brockmann, D., & Helbing, D. (2013) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1245200 · Cited by 1,253
Robustness of cellular functions
Stelling, J., Sauer, U., Szallasi, Z., Doyle, F. J., & Doyle, J. (2004) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2004.09.008 · Cited by 1,049
Controlled vocabularies and semantics in systems biology
Courtot, M., Juty, N., Knüpfer, C., Waltemath, D., Zhukova, A., Dräger, A., Dumontier, M., Finney, A., Golebiewski, M., Hastings, J., et al. (2011) · Molecular Systems Biology · doi:10.1038/msb.2011.77 · Cited by 316
“…biological entities and processes interrelate and unfold, and by the adoption of standards for how these are defined, represented, manipulated and interpreted, quantitative models can enable ‘meaningful comparison between the consequences of basic assumptions and the empirical facts’ (May, 2004).”
BackgroundSimulation-based model selection for dynamical systems in systems and population biology
Toni, T., & Stumpf, M. P. H. (2010) · Bioinformatics · doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp619 · Cited by 260
Metadata
- Authors
- May, R. M.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2004-02-06
- Volume
- 303
- Issue
- 5659
- Pages
- 790-793
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2061848003
- Cited by
- 456
- References
- 2
- FWCI
- 126.64
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
