The Nature of Mathematical Modeling

This 1998 book is about the nature of mathematical modeling, and about the kinds of techniques that are useful for modeling. This essential text will be of great value to anyone working in any quantitative or semi-quantitative discipline, including computer science, physics, applied mathematics, engineering, biology, economics and the social sciences, from undergraduates to leading researchers.

This 1998 book, about the nature and techniques of mathematical modeling, is oriented towards simple efficient implementations on computers. The text is in three sections. The first covers exact and approximate analytical techniques; the second, numerical methods; the third, model inference based on observations; and the last, the special role of time in modeling. Each of the topics in the book would be the worthy subject of a dedicated text, but only by presenting the material in this way is it possible to make so much material accessible to so many people. Each chapter presents a concise summary of the core results in an area, providing an orientation to what they can (and cannot) do, enough background to use them to solve typical problems, and pointers to access the literature for particular applications. The text is complemented by extensive worked problems.