• Many biology students don't enjoy math.
• In the evolution and ecology course here at Georgetown College, a minimal amount of math must be understood.
• Using the manipulate function in R forces students to learn R as well as the math, which makes things even more difficult for them.

So how do we fix this?

We make a shiny app!

A shiny app can be used by all of the students in the class without the need to learn R. It can be made more interactive than a manipulate function in R, and is easily accessed through the shiny.io server on the internet. An example output of such an app is presented on the next slide.

b <- .05; d <- .03; m <- 800; n_0 <- 50; t <- 1:500
theory <- m / (1 + ((m-n_0)/n_0)*exp(-1*(b-d)*t))
plot(t, theory, type = 'l', col = 'red')

Logistic plots just like the previous one can be easily manipulated (by changing the inputs using widgets) in shiny. This could be very useful for students who don't fully comprehend the math behind the biology. It could even be made entertaining to the students by adding in a simulated graph following the model of the theoretical one so that they can watch their own population grow and decrease as time goes on (depending on their inputs).

To see the application in action, click here!