Biology at all scales has become a data-driven science, with large-scale datasets driving fields from population genomics to ecology. Practicing biologists have no choice but to use computational approaches, statistics, modeling and other data science tools in their research. However, undergraduate biology education still primarily focuses on non-quantitative descriptions. This book provides students whose background is in biology with an introduction to modeling biological systems using mathematical, computational and statistical tools. It is based around a series of hands-on analyses conducted with open-source tools that allow the students to discover for themselves emergent properties of biological systems that are not evident without using model-based approaches. The goal of this book is to provide a “turn-key” introductory quantitative biology course suitable for all biology students. The book provides the narrative for the analyses and discussions to be done in class, with support from the included website, slides and test material.

Key Features

• Written in an accessible, narrative style
• Includes hands-on analyses with open-source tools
• Integrates biology across spatial and temporal scales
• Links to a course website with interactive tools
• Brings biological education into the “data science” era
• Each chapter contains a number of exercises for the reader to engage with
• Available for qualified instructors, lecture slides and animations to cover the key arguments and derivations in each chapter, as well as example exam questions.