Interacting systems: modeling, phase plane, and trajectories (11/6/2008)

1. Main Points
In this reading I learned how to use differential equations to model the growth of two interacting populations, a system requiring two differential equations. One can get an idea of what the solutions for these equations look like from a slope field.

2. Challenging
I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of a phase plane, maybe you can explain these in detail in class?

3. Intriguing
Being a biology major and having the opportunity to learn how to model different interactions between populations is really cool! The population size of the two species worms and robins modeled as a function of time I thought was a really interesting example of this!