Calculus for the Life Sciences — University of Rhode Island

Preface

This is an open educational resource (OER) calculus textbook developed for URI’s MTH 131 course. It is designed primarily for life sciences majors — students in biology, health sciences, exercise science, and nutrition — with applications drawn from those fields throughout.

The text covers functions, derivatives, integrals, and their applications, emphasizing modeling and interpretation over abstract theory. Each section includes worked examples with collapsible solutions, checkpoint exercises, and figures generated from reproducible Python scripts.

This book is a work in progress. Sections will be added as they are completed.