IA ideas library
Health and biology Maths IA ideas
Biology and medicine are full of mathematics: drug concentrations decay exponentially, epidemics follow logistic and SIR models, growth follows power laws, and diagnostic tests are a perfect use of conditional probability.
Keep ethics in mind. Use anonymised public data or measurements on yourself, get consent for anything involving other people, and never collect sensitive health information from classmates.
Health, biology & medicine ideas (9)
- A positive test result: how likely is it that you really have the condition?AA HLAA SLAI SLAI HLSolid
- How much vaccination is enough to stop measles?AI SLAI HLAA SLSolid
- How fast does my heart rate recover after exercise?AA SLAI SLAA HLAI HLAccessible
- Is BMI's “height squared” right? Evidence from OlympiansAI SLAI HLAA SLAA HLSolid
- Modelling bacterial growth in the biology labAA SLAA HLAI SLAI HLSolid
- Do more doctors mean fewer infant deaths?AI SLAI HLAA SLAccessible
- How fast did COVID-19 spread at the start? Comparing doubling timesAA SLAA HLAI SLAI HLSolid
- Can height predict lung capacity?AI SLAI HLAA SLAccessible
- How do doctors estimate your skin area? Comparing body-surface-area formulasAA SLAA HLAI SLAI HLSolid
Also relevant (11)
- Which mug keeps tea hot longest? Newton's law of cooling, comparedAA SLAA HLAI SLAI HLAccessible
- How fast would flu spread through my school? An SIR modelAI HLAA HLAmbitious
- Can the Lotka–Volterra model explain the lynx and hare cycles?AI HLAA HLAmbitious
- How does bread dough rise? A logistic model in the kitchenAA SLAA HLAI SLAI HLAccessible
- Does caffeine build up if you drink coffee every few hours?AA SLAA HLAI SLAI HLSolid
- Do students who sleep less react more slowly?AI SLAI HLAA SLAA HLAccessible
- Does money buy a longer life? GDP and life expectancyAI SLAI HLAA SLAA HLSolid
- Where should my town put its next defibrillator? A Voronoi analysisAI SLAI HLSolid
- Who lives furthest from a supermarket? Food access with Voronoi diagramsAI SLAI HLSolid
- Would a Voronoi diagram have pointed John Snow to the Broad Street pump?AI SLAI HLSolid
- Should bigger hospitals get bigger regions? Weighted Voronoi diagramsAI HLAI SLAmbitious
Frequently asked questions
Can I collect health data from other students?
Only with consent and approval from your teacher, and avoid anything sensitive. Reaction times, resting heart rate after a standard exercise, or hand span are usually fine; medical history is not.
What maths works for epidemic modelling at SL?
Exponential and logistic models fitted to data. HL students can add SIR differential equations solved with Euler's method.
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