The Purpose of Homework Problems is Insight, Not Numbers: Crafting Exercises for an Intermediate Biological Physics Class

Richard Hamming famously said “The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.” This view is true also for homework problems in an intermediate-level physics class. I constantly tell my students “an equation is not something you plug numbers into to get other numbers; it tells a story.” I will use examples from courses in Biological Physics and Medical Physics to illustrate this idea. A well-formed homework problem must balance brevity with storytelling. Often the problem is constructed by creating a “toy model” of an important biological system, and analysis of the toy model reveals some important idea or insight. A collection of such problems becomes a short-course in mathematical modeling as applied to medicine and biology, which is a skill that needs to be cultivated in biology majors, pre-med students, and anyone interested in using physical and mathematical tools to study biology and medicine.