MM556: Mathematics and statistics for pharmacy (5 ECTS)

STADS: 13015901

Level
Bachelor course

Teaching period
The course is offered in the autumn semester.

Teacher responsible
Email: colchero@imada.sdu.dk

Timetable
Show entire timetable
Show personal time table for this course.

Comment:
Ubegrænset deltagerantal.

Prerequisites:
The course cannot be chosen by students, who passed FF502, FF506 and MM536.

However, this course can only be taken if it:

1. is a constituent part of your programme 
2. is a specified recommendation for elective ECTS in your programme
3. is part of a specified transitional arrangement ('overgangsordning') for a course you have not yet passed

 

Academic preconditions:
Students taking the course are expected to:

• be able to solve simple arithmetic and algebra problems (e.g. calculate proportions and percentages, combining like terms, solving linear equations with a single unknown, etc.)
• be able to handle special functions (i.e. linear, exponential, logarithmic, polynomials, trigonometric) 
• be able to solve problems involving differentiation and integration.
• know multiplying and dividing monomials, binomials, and polynomials.

Course introduction
Today students and practitioners in several areas of pharmacy, from dosage form design, stability, biopharmaceutics as well as social pharmacy, drug administration and pharmaceutical statistics, require a good understanding of mathematics and their applications. As a result, most biological systems are explored and explained using mathematical models. Therefore, the purpose of the course is to provide the students with the fundamental tools to understand and solve mathematical problems with emphasis on pharmaceutically relevant problems. The course will provide the necessary analytical skills for differentiation, integration and to solve differential equations, as well as basic notions on statistics, while the students will also learn the application of numerical methods, such as linear and Taylor approximations, Riemann sums or Euler’s method to solve differential equations. These numerical techniques are particularly important in areas such as pharmacokinetics and physical chemistry. Students will then be trained on the basic methods in pharmaceutical statistics, which will give them elements to judge the validity of research projects relevant to pharmacy. Furthermore, these methods will provide the students with the basic tools to analyse results from experiments and pharmaceutical trials.

The course gives an academic basis for studying topics relevant to analytical spectroscopy, physical chemistry and molecular biology, all of which are part of the degree.

In relation to the competence profile of the degree it is the explicit focus of the course to:

• Establish basic calculation skills
• Provide knowledge on the different methods relevant to mathematics applied to pharmacy.
• Develop skills on applying the appropriate mathematical methods relevant to pharmacy.
• Give the competence to work in groups to explore problems in pharmaceutical applications through the use of mathematical models.
• Develop skills to present their work in a structured manner and with the appropriate mathematical notation.
• Expose the students to the use of mathematical models in scientific articles/book chapters in the scientific literature.
• Expose the students to the basic tools in pharmaceutical statistics to explore patterns and test hypotheses.
• Provide expert knowledge of a selected area of study, based on the highest level of international research within the field of mathematical biology and statistics based on the background of the teacher’s active role in the research field.

Expected learning outcome
The learning objectives of the course are that the student demonstrates the ability to:

• demonstrate the ability to identify the appropriate functions to describe simple processes relevant to pharmaceutical applications.
• judge which methods are appropriate to solve (either analytically or using numerical methods)
• understand and consequently disseminate both in written form and orally scientific articles/book chapters from the research area.
• apply and transfer methods from the presented applications to new problems, also in the context of other subjects.
• implement solutions based on the analytical and numerical methods learned in class.

Subject overview
The following main topics are contained in the course:

• Sets, properties of functions and special functions (linear, logarithmic, exponential, polynomials, rational, trigonometric)
• Differentiation and applications of differentiation
• Linear and Taylor approximations
• Integrals and integration methods
• Methods to solve first and second order differential equations
• Basic notions of probability and distributions
• Descriptive statistics (exploratory data analysis)
• Methods for hypothesis testing: t-test, chi-square test, ANOVA, simple linear regression.

Literature

Meddeles ved kursets start.

Website
This course uses e-learn (blackboard).

Prerequisites for participating in the exam
None

Assessment and marking:
The exam is evaluated by the Danish 7-mark scale and internal marking based on three parts:

1. Three mandatory tests. Count 60 % of the total evaluation.
   Allowed exam aids: Open book, only R as software
2. Eight quizzes. Count 20 % of the total evaluation.
3. Four group exercises. Count 20 % of the total evaluation

Expected working hours
The teaching method is based on three phase model.
Intro phase: 28 hours
Skills training phase: 38 hours, hereof:
 - Tutorials: 28 hours
 - Laboratory exercises: 10 hours

Educational activities Study phase: 14 hours
Educational form
Activities during the study phase:

• Solving practice exercises.
• Reading handouts and other material.
• Answering graded quizzes on the material they have read.
• Investigating and discussing the terms and concepts they are struggling with and then constructing a wiki.

Language
This course is taught in Danish or English, depending on the lecturer.

Course enrollment
See deadline of enrolment.

Tuition fees for single courses
See fees for single courses.