math and med school

[asdasd12345]

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i was always very math minded, understand calc and all that with no bother. ive never really dabbled that much in biology or chemistry, i obviously still have to take any premed courses, but physics with calc was very easy for me. does anyone have any opinions of whether i can tackle the subject matter is gen. chem and gen bio if i can do math very easy (conceptually speak, i know they are totally different subjects)? i also heard that organic chemistry is very very hard.

 

[jlee9531]

not much math in ochem...just concepts...

math may be more of a help to you in gchem...

 

[secretmiss]

Math is really important for gen chem. For orgo, it helps, but in general if you are good at math problem solving skills, you probably have the type of thinking process to handle orgo synthesis problems. In my opinion, excelling at orgo requires using all the information you memorized and applying it to solve problems. For bio, math doesn't help so much.

 

[exmike]

you will use very little math in medical school.

 

[Buckeye(OH)]

Math is really important for gen chem. For orgo, it helps, but in general if you are good at math problem solving skills, you probably have the type of thinking process to handle orgo synthesis problems. In my opinion, excelling at orgo requires using all the information you memorized and applying it to solve problems. For bio, math doesn't help so much.

I disagree, I had no trouble with calc or any math and absolutely sucked hard at orgo 🙁

I finally figured it out for the MCAT though 😀



Adrian

 

[ImmunoANT]

you will use very little math in medical school.

I'm not very sure of this but I know in physiology class math is very important if you want to calculate blood flow rate, muscle tension, etc etc...

now if you are thinking of applying math to bio, well, you are in luck. there are several emerging fields in biology that are math intensive (a little bit too much if I may add), such as bioinformatics and systems biology (check out L Hood from U Wash). I think people are now starting to realize biology is more and more like an informational science. A cell is basically a circuit with very complicated wiring.
if you are interested in systems bio, here's an excellent review

 

[10minutes]

I am a math major and I did very well in my gen chem class. For bio and orgo, however, your math skills won't help much.

Btw, what's your major? I don't know about you, but you can't really tell whether you are really good at math unless you do really well in high level (400-500) classes. Calculus 1-3, DPQ, etc are joke compared to Abstract Algebra and Partial Differential Eqns. Of course, the same story with physics. Try quantum mechanics sometime if you haven't. Enjoy.

 

[exmike]

I'm not very sure of this but I know in physiology class math is very important if you want to calculate blood flow rate, muscle tension, etc etc...

now if you are thinking of applying math to bio, well, you are in luck. there are several emerging fields in biology that are math intensive (a little bit too much if I may add), such as bioinformatics and systems biology (check out L Hood from U Wash). I think people are now starting to realize biology is more and more like an informational science. A cell is basically a circuit with very complicated wiring.
if you are interested in systems bio, here's an excellent review

Yeah, I just took physio. The math is pretty simple, nothing more than algebra.

What I meant was the OP should be worrying more about things other than his math skills in terms of med school. For his prereq classes, well thats another issue all together.

 

[vwhan]

Ex mike is correct. I have had to use very little math in the first year. I used my calculator for 2 exams. The first was respiratory phys and the second was for renal phys (calculating clearances). In both cases, the math was straight forward algebra.

 

[Blade28]

i was always very math minded, understand calc and all that with no bother. ive never really dabbled that much in biology or chemistry, i obviously still have to take any premed courses, but physics with calc was very easy for me. does anyone have any opinions of whether i can tackle the subject matter is gen. chem and gen bio if i can do math very easy (conceptually speak, i know they are totally different subjects)? i also heard that organic chemistry is very very hard.

Definitely. As others have stated already, math is more important in g-chem over bio and o-chem, but it's still a great skill to have.

 

[Lion-O]

Try quantum mechanics sometime if you haven't.

*Cough* pretentiousness *cough*

 

[chirurgeon]

An addendum to ImmunoANTs excellent post:

As medicine turns more and more evidence-based, statistics grows ever more in importance. Folks with applied math skills are in demand in the medical research field because of the plethora of meta-analyses and issues of statistical power that keep recurring.

Probably the most math/physics oriented specialty is radiation oncology. Many of the amazing folks in that specialty have PhDs in physics.

Good luck!