Relationships Between Variables

When a physician orders a continuous intravenous infusion of a medication, the flow rate set on the IV pump dictates the total volume of the drug entering the patient's bloodstream over time. The nurse controls the pump; the patient's body responds. If the pump is turned up, the volume of medication delivered increases. If the pump is turned down, the volume decreases. This daily clinical reality is not merely a medical protocol—it is a physical manifestation of a mathematical relationship.

An intravenous infusion pump physically demonstrates a mathematical relationship between the volume of fluid delivered and time.

To succeed in the allied health sciences, and specifically on the ATI TEAS 7 exam, you must understand how to quantify, visualize, and predict these relationships. Biology and chemistry are governed by variables interacting with one another. Whether you are titrating a dosage, analyzing the relationship between caloric intake and body mass index, or studying the inverse relationship between the volume of a lung and the pressure within it (Boyle’s Law), you are navigating the mathematics of variation.

Here, we will dismantle the architecture of mathematical models, explore how variables influence one another, and learn how to interpret the visual language of data.