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Sofia.

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Hello! 

I want to do my Math IA on modeling infectious diseases, but I'm pretty sure that would involve using computer software (modeling programs) to solve the equations. Is that okay, or can I only do an IA on differential equations that I can solve by hand?

Thanks in advance  ^_^

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According to what my teacher told me, you are free to do include anything in your exploration. The only thing that is necessary to pay attention to is to make sure that you’ve put enough maths in it. So you are more than welcome to do whatever you like! In fact, by using a computer program, you can easily reach the IB requirements of using technology in your math IA.

 

However, you shouldn’t spend too much of the IA working with the software; this is because frankly, computer programs (in many cases) are not so useful unless the problem is about partial differential equations or something. With ‘normal’ differential equations, it’s not that hard to carry out the computations by hand. Moreover, I would suggest you to spend most of your time writing about the maths behind the solutions of the differential equations and how they can used to model infectious diseases.

 

I did my math IA about using the inhomogeneous second order linear differential equations to model resonance. Then after solving the differential equations by hand to get the simplistic equation describing resonance, I applied the equation I’ve just arrived in specific situation using computer and graphing software. It might be good for you to use the same structure?

 

Good luck! :)

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