BIOL398-04/S15:Class Journal Week 7

Lauren M. Magee

• Now that we have closed out the first section of the course and your first modeling project, read the article Lander, AD (2010) The Edges of Understanding. BMC Biology 8:40.
  1. What distinction does Lander draw between modeling to "discover new knowledge" and modeling for "understanding"?
  2. Which point of view resonates with you more? Why?
  3. Discuss your answers to the above two questions with regard to the research project you just completed.

Tessa A. Morris

1. Lander explains that discovering new knowledge is finding new information, where understanding is finding different ways to explain or interpret information that has already been discovered.
2. The view about understanding resonates with me more. My career goal is to go into the medical field and conduct research on diseases and disorders of the body. Much is known about the human body, but I want to use mathematical techniques to find new and more effective ways of analyzing different medical disorders
3. In this project, we dealt with understanding, rather than discovering new knowledge. We used Matlab in order to come up with a mathematical model to try and further explain nitrogen metabolism. This research project was interesting to me because it used modeling for understanding, which was the type that resonates more with me.

Tessa A. Morris 19:22, 2 March 2015 (EST)

Kristen M. Horstmann

1. Lander believes that gaining factual knowledge about a process or organism is learning, and does not necessarily constitute a full understanding of the how it actually works. Understanding is gaining a deeper knowledge of the topic beyond the facts.
2. Understanding definitely resonates with me more because I feel like anyone could google or memorize facts about a subject, but it takes a real passion for learning and interest in the topic in order to gain a deeper understanding. In my opinion, pursuing this exploration into understanding over facts is what distinguishes scholars and scientists into who they are.
3. This project is far more about understanding than learning. Yes, we have had to learn about different biochemical processes, the differential equations, and the different aspects that make up this processes, but it takes a full understanding in order to achieve what we have done. Modeling the differentials, being able to compare it to actual experimental results, and repeating it back to the class all takes an understanding that delves beyond textbook and factual memorizing.

Alyssa N Gomes

1. The distinction that Lander draws between modeling to "discover new knowledge" and "modeling for understanding" is that discovering new knowledge means using old information to compose something new, and gaining some sort of new unknown unlike before, and modeling for understanding means using old information in a new way, having depth on the topic and being able to apply it in a multitude of ways.
2. I know most people want to say that understanding resonates with them more, but I personally have a great interest in the unknown. There is so much we think we know about the world, and yet there is so so much unknown. I love the idea of using old information in a new and exciting way, but I love the idea of breaking boundaries even more, being able to have a theory and everyone thinking you're crazy, until one day, showing them something new that blows their minds. In relation to biology and mathematics, it's easy to think we know all the answers already, because there are an endless amount of books on each subject, but there are still so many illnesses to be treated, so many ways of modeling things that haven't yet been modeled. As the industry and the amount of information we have ever-expands, we have the opportunity to bring something new to the table.
3. In this project, we had to do a great depth of understanding. There were many terms that were vague and we knew how to define on a baseline level, but as a Math major who has only taken Biology 101, there were methods done here that I never would have originally thought of, Seeing how we used the information from the paper and adapted it into our own project definitely gave me more depth on what types of modeling there are, and that there isn't just one answer to everything.

Alyssa N Gomes 22:29, 2 March 2015 (EST)