Goals: The students get a basic understanding of advanced mathematical concepts and methods in numerics, statistics, and optimization in the context of current research in bioinformatics and systems biology. They are able to choose problem-specific methods, to apply them in practice, and to evaluate the quality of the results.

Contents: The course will address topics from the following areas:

• Numerics
  • Modeling chemical reaction networks
  • Differential equation modeling
  • Parameter identification, sensitivity, identifiability
• Optimization
  • Linear optimization (Simplex, polyhedra)
  • Integer linear optimization (branch-and-bound, branch-and-cut)
  • Local search and metaheuristics
• Statistics
  • Testing and regression
  • Classification
  • Bootstrap and model evaluation

General notes regarding the exercises:

• to pass the course, you need to pass the exam at the end, and you need to pass the exercises (formal requirements "Aktive Teilnahme" and "Regelmäßige Teilnahme")
• to pass "Aktive Teilnahme" (active participation)  you need to pass the theoretical assignments 
• to pass "Regelmäßige Teilnahme" (regular participation)  you have to attend  75 percent of the  problem sessions, 
• if you successfully passed the exercises in a previous semester, i.e. all the requirements, you do not need to take the exercises again (although it is highly recommended)
• however partial results from previous semesters cannot be taken into account.

Problem sessions:

There are two weekly problem sessions, both on Thursday.

• Übung 01 starts at 12:00pm (s.t.) on Campus
• Übung 02 starts at 2:00pm (s.t.) online

Theoretical assignments:

• There will be weekly assignment sheets with 2-3 tasks each. Those will not be graded.
• Each student has to  present at least 2 of his solutions to the other students during the semester. The chosen tasks have to be from different parts of the lecture (Numerics, Optimization, Statistics) and have to be submitted until Tuesday 10pm of the corresponding week.
• One of the solutions then has to be presented orally, and both written solutions will be made accessible for all students as sample solution.
• Additionally, each student has to pass the Reviews.