Health and biology Maths IA ideas

How health & biology explorations reach the top bands

Personal engagement (C)

Collect your own measurements where it is safe and ethical (heart rate, lung capacity), or choose real health data and explain why the question matters to you.

Reflection (D)

Reflect on measurement error, sample limits and ethics, and be careful not to claim medical conclusions the data cannot support.

Use of mathematics (E)

SL: Exponential, logistic or power models fitted and compared, or statistical tests with conditions checked, interpreted in health terms.

HL: Differential equation models (drug levels, epidemics), Bayes' theorem with realistic rates, or inference with confidence intervals.

An HL version

Build a compartment or dose model as a differential equation, or use Bayes' theorem with real prevalence data and a sensitivity analysis.

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 (15)

• 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
• The cheapest healthy weekly shop: a linear programming diet problemAI SLAI HLAA SLSolid
• Estimating the area of a leaf with random pointsAA SLAI SLAA HLAI HLAccessible
• How fractal is a fern? Box-counting dimension from photographsAI SLAA SLAI HLAA HLSolid
• Do we know how long we spend on our phones? Estimates versus screen-time dataAI SLAA SLAI HLAccessible