Course description and expected outcomes
All the scientific disciplines require, to some extent, mathematics. Biotechnologies are no exception, appropriate mathematical tools are needed to formalize the laws that describe the behavior of biological systems as well as to analyze experimental data. For this reasons the course of Mathematics and Bases of Computer Science and Statistics is a necessary introduction to the Bachelor Course in Biotechnology.

Aim of the course is to provide with the basic knowledge of analysis, linear algebra and statistics, which will be needed to understand the fundamental laws that regulate the biological phenomena. At the end of the course, students will have all the mathematical and statistical tools to understand basic models of biological system, especially for what concerns the thermodynamical, kinetic, and electromagnetic aspects, as well as to analyze and interpret experimental data.

Cognitive skills
- Learning of the fundamentals of the language of mathematics and mathematical logic
- Understanding of the notions of function, continuous function, asymptotic behavior, and limit
- Understanding the definition of derivative and integral
- Learning of the fundamental concepts of linear algebra, especially the notion of vector and matrix
- Understanding of the foundations of probability and statistics
- Basic knowledge of software for data analysis and function plotting

Learning abilities
- Ability to describe the qualitative behavior of the elementary functions and to compute their derivative and integral
- Be able to perform simple operations with matrices and to solve a system of linear equations
- Be able to perform statistical analysis of population data, for example to compute mean and variance
- Be able to use the programs Graph, to plot elementary functions, and Excel, for statistical data analysis

Communication skills
At the end of the course the students will have learnt the basics of the mathematical language, and will be able to explain the logical steps that lead to the proof of a theorem or to the solution of a mathematical exercise.

Specific skills
Students will be able to understand mathematical laws and models for biological systems. They will be also able to interpret the graph of a function and the result of the statistical analysis of a set of data.