Professor: Bisshopp Course format: Lecture Number of respondents: 6 Total Enrollment: 6

Class Composition Froshs: 0 Sophs: 0 Jrs: 5 Srs: 1 Concs: 5 Non-Concs: 1 Don't Know: 0	Instructor Average: 2.25 Course Average: 2.40

Every other year, the Applied Math department offers a course that brings math, biology, and applied math together: "Quantitative Models of Biological Systems." What the point of this course was, though, was not very clear: the course announcment claimed it would focus on a particular aspect of the biology field, but students could not identify it. Prerequisites included AM 33, 34 or 35, 36, BI 42, and a familiarity with MATLAB.

The respondents generally didn't think very highly of Professor Bisshopp. His lectures went well over the heads of most of the class. especially toward the beginning of the semester. Some felt they might have managed better if they had been senior concentrators in the department. Others mentioned that he tended to ramble thorugh various topics, making it difficult to put it all together.

The principal assignments in this course consisted of three take-home midterm papers and a final paper. The reading from the text was somewhat helpful in understanding the material, especially towards the end of the semester when the professor began to use more of the textbook's examples in class.

Opinions regarding the intellectual value of this course differed pretty widely. Some finsihed the semester utterly indifferent because they never understood the purpose; others said they really enjoyed the course and believed they learned a lot because the papers were so open-ended that they could explore whatever topic they were interested in.

Whether or not to take this course is a highly subjective question: if you're strongly interested in the subject and are a self-starter, you will probably like it. Otherwise, it may be best to look elsewhere.

View AM/0107 in the Brown Online Course Announcement.