Mathematical Modeling Books

Elementary mathematical modeling, as an undergraduate course, presents many of the topics found in a traditional precalculus course, with the idea that most of the students engaged in a mathematical modeling course are not inclined to take calculus in their immediate future. The idea of such a course is to introduce, as soon as possible, the way in which mathematics can be used in applications. For example, instead of introducing a concept and then showing some applications, the idea in this course is often the opposite: here is a concrete problem, now how can we model this and develop some mathematics to solve this problem. Topics in elementary mathematical modeling often include general properties of functions and a more in depth study of linear models; exponential, logarithmic and natural growth models; polynomial and bounded growth models; and sometimes trigonometric models are also included.