mathematized

Started a pet project trying to code up the equations from the Mackay and Glass, Oscillation and Chaos in Physiological Control Systems (1977) paper. I need to learn some maths, and some maths programming to broaden my skills beyond wet lab molecular biology. Copasi is ok but it’s reaction based and I worry a point and click interface wont get me a job when I graduate. However, I am rapidly lost in Matlab and Mathematica. I chose Matlab for compatibility and support in the MIB community, but drifted into Mathematica as it seems easier to program using symbolic maths. Both are ok with algebra, then I just get blown away doing anything dynamic like ODE’s. If anybody reads this and has any good tutorials for programming up ODE systems in either/any computing language please let me know :/