Physics 380, 2011: Block one: Biological information processing is probabilistic

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Back to Physics 380, 2011: Information Processing in Biology.

The main ideas we discussed in block one are:

1. Many biological information processing systems are probabilistic -- we studied properties of random variables -- uniform, Poisson, exponential, Gaussian
2. Random walks and (on large scales) diffusion are particularly useful in modeling biological information processing -- and we studied their properties in different dimensions, in reaction-diffusion systems, etc.
3. Noises can be modeled using different techniques, including the diffusion equation (Fokker-Planck), the master equation, the Langevin process
4. Noises propagate, and these propagation properties are far from trivial