Okay. The main reason people uh tend to overlook the utility of math in math classes is they are thinking of their future goals in those math classes. So people want to pass the next test. They want to get good grades in their math class and they want to secure a future job for themselves. And often times the way the math class is built it feels like an obstacle instead of a tool. So you feel like you have to overcome the math that you're learning rather than using it in your seeing how practical it is and using in your future life. Uh part of the problem here is that math in school is often focused on teaching singular concepts one at a time and it doesn't uh very often connect these concepts to real world applications. Uh here is an example of a good question. uh it is from the mathematic uh curriculum.
It is for algebra 1. Uh the nice thing about this curriculum is math students uh will go in they will get to play with an easier problem like this for a little bit and they will get to understand the concepts uh before the teacher formally teaches them uh the concepts uh which leads to them being able to build intuition and more easily see why it is useful. However, in this specific question, there is still the problem of uh it being set up slightly weirdly. You wouldn't really ever think of a scenario where you have a specific amount of money and then another specific amount and have to figure out the prices of two uh objects just based on the totals. This doesn't come up that often. Uh so the way you would solve this question uh if you're uh a student intuiting this for the first time is you would play around with it.
You would notice that there are two bags of pretzels in this problem uh that are extra and then you would use that to figure out the price of each bag of pretzels and after that you can use the price per bag of pretzels over here to figure out the price of the gum. Now, this question was built uh to be pretty good, but often times you will find questions that are not as great. For example, on the SAT, you often see questions like this. You have a limited time to answer these questions, right? So, right now, I'll tell you the answer to this question is 45. Uh now it may seem surprising that uh you're able to get the answer to this question really fast but the best way to answer this question is to memorize a specific rule. Uh basically what you have to identify is that this function is a quadratic meaning that it uh is U-shaped and it is symmetrical right and that these two numbers are the zeros of the quadratic that means they're at the same height.
Once you know that the you have you know that the minimum has to be in the middle of the two solutions and you can get this question in under maybe five seconds. But this presents the problem. You aren't when you are studying something like this you aren't really putting in the effort to understand why it works. You would simply memorize a rule and understand that it works just to inflate your test score. this there are worse questions right this is a harder SAT question uh it's built on two functions right so the way that is the easiest to solve this question is to not even attempt any of the algebra yourself right you basically note down each of the important pieces of information right you need um to find the y intercept in this case and you need to find uh that from two functions uh and the relation relationship between this one function and this other function is right over here.
And one of these functions is linear. So you already know what it's going to look like, but you don't know these coefficients. The way you would solve this is by putting it in simply putting the table with the numbers into your calculator and then telling the calculator that the function f is linear and then using a regression which is uh where the calculator tries to numerically find the exact solution to a function given some restraints and using this you can get the answer really quickly. uh but you you really don't learn too much about how to use uh a tool like a regression in real life. Uh you simply memorize a rule for understanding how to do a test question really quickly. Math in real life is pretty different from this. It often requires many connections between different subjects to actually answer a question and it requires experimenting with each uh problem thoroughly before you can actually find a solution.
Uh to contrast uh these previous test questions from a real life example, we're going to do one right here. So say you have a specific amount of extra credit that your teacher has given you and you want to spread it around to a bunch of assignments so that your grade goes up the most. So the problem is how would you do that? Uh and we can actually solve this with math. Uh the easiest way to go about a problem like this is to start with a simpler version of the problem. Uh so in this case re real grades in the grade book are a weighted average but we can gain a lot of insight by simply modeling it as a simple average before moving on to the more complicated case. So we know that the formula uh for a simple average is the average is the total of all of the grades that means you add them all up and divide it by the number of grades you have in the grade book.
Right? So if you reason about this really quickly, uh that means the total has to equal uh the average you have currently times the number of grades that are in the grade book. Another thing that you can reason about is the total. It doesn't really matter what grade you put the extra credit on. The total will increase by the same amount no matter which one you put it on. Right? So now that we have this information, we can calculate that when you add the point the extra credit points to your grade, the total will go up by this much and the new average will be this new total divided by this uh the new the number of grades that you have in the grade book. And if you simplify it out, it actually comes out to you're adding something to your existing average, right? So, your it's your extra credit points divided by the amount of grades you have in the grade book.
Now, we're not quite done yet. Uh, as we established earlier, the grades in the actual grade book are weighted. That means each category averages individually and then you add them up in a way that is weighted, right? But this is really fine because we already know that each category is an average of itself. Right? So since we did the simpler example, we know that it doesn't matter which grade we add it to in a category. It only matters uh the only change to the equation is that we multiply everything by the weight. which means that uh the true change in the grade would be um the amount of extra credit points you receive uh times the weight divided by the number of grades in the book. So now what insight we can gain from this is if you have a problem like this, you can simply just put all of your extra credit points into the great uh into the category that has the highest weight divided by the number of grays in that category.
This wasn't too tricky of a problem. Uh but it still required a lot of thinking and a lot of uh experimenting with the problem to figure out. This is really different from um the math in school because in the math in school we had a few simple concepts and we had a lot of different rules we had to memorize to solve problems. But in the math in real life uh we have to investigate systems and we have to play around with the problem in order to actually like figure out the solutions. Uh this is why uh actually playing this is why actually like learning how things fit together is really important. Using learned math concepts to solve real world problems is how I make waves for a better tomorrow. Thank you, Ahmed. I'm glad you can show us how math works in life. Uh, all right.
Here we go. Here is our last presentation for TEDex DHS 2026, improving medicine one gene at a time by Ashton Spardella. This is Ashton's fourth time. Yes, fourth time participating in our TEDex DHS conference and we are so happy to have him with us for this last time. It's really bittersweet right now. Um Ashton is a member of our marching band and indoor percussion. He is also the president of the robotics club. Ashton plans to attend Western New England University this coming fall to study pharmacy. Please welcome one last time Ashton Spardella. Headache, nausea, drowsiness, fatigue, anxiety, vomiting, insomnia, vision changes, depression, anaphilaxis, seizures, liver damage, death. These are all possible side effects when someone has an adverse drug reaction, which is usually due to medical professionals using the one-sizefits-all approach. This is when doctors treat patients based on average outcomes. They apply standard diagnostics and treatments to people who suffer from the same disease.
While this method has been efficient in general care, it's ignoring important aspects of the individual such as genetics, environment, and lifestyle, which can cause differences in how people react to medication. In the US, over 1.5 million people visit the emergency room a year due to errors with medication. Of those, about 500,000 usually require hospitalization. So, what's being done to prevent this? Pharmarmacology is the study of how chemical agents interact with biological systems. And genomics is the study of an organism's complete DNA sequence and how genes interact with each other and the environment. When put together, they make pharmaccogenomics, which is how an individual's unique to genetic makeup determines how they will react to medication. Currently, it's being used to optimize therapy, minimize the trial and error process when prescribing, and reduce adverse drug reactions. The human genome consists of 23 pairs of chromosomes, each containing DNA.
This DNA allows our bodies to build cells, tissues, and organs to ensure proper development. No humans except for identical twins share the same genome. In 2003, for the first time, humans were able to map almost the entire genome, excluding 8% which is considered to be difficult and repetitive. In 2022, though, the first ever completely mapped human genome was released to the public. There are three common ways to get phiccogenomic testing done. The first is a blood test where a sample is taken by a healthcare professional. Another is via saliva sample where a patient will provide a sample or it will be collected via swab or pad. And finally, a cheek swab where a swab is used to collect cells from the inside of the cheek. After a sample is taken, it's sent to a lab to look at four main things. Drug receptors, drug uptake, drug breakdown, and drug development.
Drug receptors are proteins on cell membranes or in the cell that specific molecules bind to. The number and type of receptors you have are determined by your DNA. Some people have a lot of receptors, meaning they need to have a higher dose for some medications to be effective to make them have a good strong response. On the other hand, some people have small amounts of receptors, meaning a lower dose will be more efficient to not cause buildups of the medication in your body. If the medicine still has a weak effect, then a medicine that doesn't require receptors would be a better option. There's also the possibility of having no receptors, meaning the only way to ensure a good response is by using medicine that does not require them. The type of receptors on your cell is also important. Not all medicine can bond to all receptors.
If medicine isn't able to bond to your receptors, then it will build up and cause an adverse reaction. If this occurs though, a different medication that works with your receptors or one that doesn't require receptors would work best. Breast cancer and the use of the drug TDM1 is a more common example of this. Sometimes people with breast cancer produce too much of the HR2 receptor that helps the cancer spread and develop at a much faster rate. TDM1 attaches to HR2 receptors on cancerous cells and kills them. It's likely that if you're diagnosed with breast cancer, your doctor will run tests to determine the amount of HR2 receptors on your cells. If there's a higher amount, it's likely TDM1 will be described. But if you don't have a lot, then TDM1 will not work to help minimize the cancer. Drug uptake is when medication is taken into the tissues and cells that they act in.
How quickly drug uptake occurs is determined by a DNA. Decreased uptake time can cause medicine to work poorly, but also build up in other areas causing an adverse reaction. Uptake time also includes how fast medication is removed from the cell. If medication is removed too fast, then it might not have enough time to effectively work, meaning a higher dosage or taking it more frequently would work more efficiently. If medicine is removed slowly, though, then taking a lower dosage or taking medicine less frequently would allow the medicine to work more efficiently. Statins are medicine that work in the liver to lower cholesterol, which is when a fat-like substance builds up in arteries, causing someone to be at risk of stroke or heart attack. Statins have to successfully go through uptake to be transported into the liver which occurs by a protein made by the SLC1B1 gene.
A mutation in this gene can cause little amounts of a statin called svastatin to be taken into the liver. When taken in a high dose, this will cause a buildup of statin in the blood which causes muscle problems such as weakness and pain. Tests can be done to determine if svastin is the best statin to use and if it is, which dosage you should take. DNA also affects drug breakdown, which is how fast a medication is broken down inside of your body. If medicine breaks down fast, then the drug will exit your system faster, meaning a higher dosage or a more effective drug is better to help you. Opposite of that, if your body breaks down medicine slowly, then a lower dosage would be required for medicine to function properly. When treating depression, the CYP P2D6 and CYP2C19 genes can affect the breakdown of the anti-depressant amatrippalin.
Some people break down the medicine too fast, meaning a different medication or higher dose would work best. If you break down amatipptalin slowly, then a smaller dose may be required or a different medication to prevent an adverse reaction. Drug development is when medication is used to treat an underlying problem rather than just the symptoms as sometimes disease is caused by mutations in genes. Although these mutations can have vary and have different effects depending on the individual. This could include a protein not being made properly or not being made at all. The medication given will be based on how the mutation affects the protein and any medication for a specific gene would only work for a very specific genetic mutation of that gene. Cystic fibrosis is caused by a genetic mutation in the CFTR gene which affects the production of CFTR proteins. This protein forms channels that act as passageways to move chloride across cell membranes and go from the inside to the outside of the cell.
When the protein is made correctly, the channel is able to open and close. But the genetic mutation that causes cystic fibrosis can result in a channel that is always closed. Ivactor is a medication that forces the channel open. Some people with cystic fibrosis though have a different genetic mutation that causes the channel to not be made at all. Meaning the ivacater wouldn't work. Pharmaccogenomic testing is not currently available for all medications or conditions. Right now it's most often used for blood clot prevention. A blood clot is when blood thickens to form a mass of blood cells which can stop the flow of blood in the body. Several gene variants require a lower dosage of medications to work efficiently. It's also being used for HIV, which is a virus that attacks the immune system and destroys our body's natural ability to fight infections. A variant in the HLAB gene causes people to be at high risk of having a severe skin reaction to a backabir.
And a variant in the CYP2B6 gene can affect the nervous system when taking epoparents. Muscle sclerosis is a chronic autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the myelin sheath on nerves. variants in TM TPMT or NUDT15 can cause a suppressed immune system in response to aathoprene. It's also being used for very specific treatment decisions. A normal dosage of mercapurine which is very commonly used to treat leukemia which is a blood cancer where high amounts of abnormal white blood cells are produced can cause severe side effects in the in if the individual has a mutation in the TPMT gene. If someone with colon cancer, which is when a tumor forms in the large intestine, has a variant of the UGT1A1 gene, then iron could cause severe side effects and increase their risk of infection. It is also starting to be used more for those who have recently undergone organ transplants.
After someone underos an organ transplant, they have to take lifelong amunosuppressant medications to prevent their body from attacking the new organ, which the body sees as a foreign object. If a medicine is not working post-rplant or causing severe side effects, then pharmaccogenomic testing is becoming an option. Pharmaccogenomics is constantly growing. While it's not available for all medications or conditions, it is becoming more available and more reliable. Researchers are constantly identifying new interactions between medicine and genes while also looking at factors such as lifestyle, environment, and other medications and conditions in hopes to make pharmaccogenomics a more used factor when making treatment decisions. headache, nausea, drowsiness, fatigue, anxiety, vomiting. All medications come with a risk and we've accepted the trial and error process as a part of treatment. But pharmaccogenomics offers an end to this. It offers the right medicine at the right dose for the right genome.