**note: I took the course with Dudley, not Rollo**

The course itself was fairly interesting if you enjoy biodiversity and the environment. Make sure you know the articles very thoroughly - most of them are interesting (especially at the end).

10% Quiz - mostly based on...

Click here to read the entire review

I took this course with Dr. Dushoff. I enjoyed it, since I'm a mathematics student with an interest in evolutionary ecology, and this course was taught by a math-heavy professor in biology.

We covered a set of mathematical models that describe various ecological phenomena in time. None of the models were covered in particularly much detail. Mathematical biology of this sort involves a great deal of differential equations, but there was no mathematics prerequisite for the course - thus, we ended up studying very simple, qualitatively described systems.

Dr. Dushoff did seem to confuse himself quite often, and I think I know why - when people pose questions in biological terms and ask about graphs qualitatively, it's difficult to translate into quantitative mathematical terms and then translate back effectively. Of course, most of the class didn't have a mathematical background, and thus asked questions about fundamentally mathematical ideas in biological terms, which ended up being confusing for everyone.

I'd highly recommend the course to anyone who has taken math 1A03 and 1AA3, or has seen a little bit of differential equations. Otherwise, the course won't mean much beyond the memorization of a few graphs and concepts (hey, that's what biology seems to be anyway, right? (; ).

We had a couple of assignments worth 10% in total. They involved the use of R, and were generally very easy. Dr. Dushoff wrote all the code, we just had to plug in numbers for the variables, make a couple of simple qualitative descriptions, print out the graphs and...free marks!

The tests (midterms and final) were very easy. However, I was generally surprised to find that the bulk of the class could recite definitions in the review sessions (far better than I could ever dream of doing) but fared quite poorly on the tests. This is because there's very few concepts we need to know, and they're quite simple. The tests involve application of these concepts, and so we really need to know why and how we would use the ideas.

Generally, if you've done well in 'thinking' courses like mathematics, philosophy, or physics, (or if you enjoy the dynamics of ecological systems, of course!) then you should find this course a breeze.

I took it this past winter (2011) with Dr. Dushoff. You can't help but love him, but I would definitely agree that he gets really flustered and can't remember what he just said half the time so it's hard to get a clear answer. I think that the general concepts were fairly straight forward and simple, and the math was really more theoretical that was linked to a written explanation of the concept so if your not good at math (like me) I didn't really find it to be a problem. The two midterms were super easy with just simple and straight forward multiple choice and 1 short answer, but I found that the final was considerably harder. The assignments did not really have anything to do with lecture and your mark really depended on how well you were able to understand the online instructions explaining how to use the computor program that you had to download to make graphs.
Overall I got a really good mark, but it definitely was not my favourite class and lectures were dry on occassion.

Hey, are the tutorials for this course mandatory?

Doesn't require a lot of math skills. Just go to tutorials and you'll be fine. Overall pretty easy course.

Im taking this course next term, and I found that I didnt really like his teaching style and Im kind of afraid of the math everyone said in the course. What kind of math can there be?

does this course rely heavily on evolution at all?

not at all focused on evolution

easy course but boring content. fell every single lecture

Originally Posted by petitjcl

Im taking this course next term, and I found that I didnt really like his teaching style and Im kind of afraid of the math everyone said in the course. What kind of math can there be?

The math you will actually have to use to get through the course is nothing to worry about at all. Rearranging equations and so on. There is a lot of math (both explicitly and in coding intuition) in the course if you care to look for it-- for example, he gives us code in R and makes us do the pointless work of plugging values in -- but we could mess around with the code itself and see what happens. The way Dushoff teaches it suits a more mathematical style, but you can get other things out of lecturing too. Plus, he goes really slow.

Has anyone had Bolker as a prof in other courses before? Bolker is teaching this course next year.

Could anyone give an updated review of this course? Thanks!

2 tests, like 3 tutorial assignments.

tests pretty basic, cover lecture material
tutorial assignments were free marks. drew some graphs and were spoon fed how to use R. basic math equations (all the formulas are in the lecture notes you just need to know what's what..)
exam just a longer midterm

i didn't do amazing in the course because the content actually made me lose consciousness but I think if you can manage to stay awake you will do very well.

has bolker taught this before

Originally Posted by Silver

has bolker taught this before

I don't think so. At least not in the last 5 years.

I initially took this course thinking it would an easy upper course. However, the first midterm did not go so well, many people did not as well as they expected and thus the prof had to curve the first midterm. IMO, the first midterm was difficult especially the short answer section. The second midterm was make easier and doable, the I assume the average on this midterm was quite high. The difficultly of exam was in between the the two midterms and all multiple choice. The assignments were easy to get 90+ on, and there was 2% bonus for attending classes. I found the content to be boring and skipped most lectures after the first midterm. It is however doable to get double digits in this class. I do recommend this course for upper level science students.