News Release

Develop highly transferable skills in mathematical modelling with "Science by Simulation"

From epidemiology to elections, fractals to finance, chaos to calculus

Book Announcement

World Scientific

Science by Simulation, Volume 1: A Mezze of Mathematical Models

image: Cover of "Science by Simulation, Volume 1: A Mezze of Mathematical Models" view more 

Credit: World Scientific

To fully appreciate Science you have to build the associated mathematical models yourself. The assembly of this private universe of algebra and diagrams is an absorbing and highly creative task. It is also practical and may involve the use of computer technology to perform repeated calculations, plot graphs, make spreadsheets, write code and make apps with graphical user interfaces.

Science by Simulation, Volume 1: A Mezze of Mathematical Models will be your guide to modelling epidemics such as Plague, Ebola and Coronavirus. You will develop simple models of the atmosphere, rainbows and radar systems, navigation and geodesy. It will provide you with powerful analytical tools to assess “how well do we know what we know” via Bayesian inference, and introduce models of mortgages, savings, stock trading and how to make sense of recent UK elections. It is also a computational cookbook of chaos theory: bifurcating bunny population models, double pendulums, strange attractors and fractals.

Rather than a 'what' of Science, this book is aimed at the 'how', readily applied to projects by students and professionals. Written in a friendly style based upon the author's expertise in teaching and pedagogy, this mathematically rigorous book is designed for readers to follow arguments step-by-step with stand-alone chapters which can be read independently.

This book contains high quality technical illustrations throughout, with full captions so the figures themselves should be largely self-explanatory, independent of the body text. Nearly all illustrations have been created programmatically by the author, using the methods described in the book.

A book for early undergraduate and keen high school students of Mathematics, Physics, Economics, Chemistry, Engineering, Computer Science, and Biology, Science by Simulation, Volume 1 also serves as a general interest textbook for the professional mathematical modelling community. Its contents are generally applicable, and not constrained by syllabus and course content that may become out of date in a few years.

This book will help readers become much more adept at model building and problem solving. And if you build all the models yourself, you will certainly develop expertise in scientific computing. For younger readers, well-honed skills in both of these aspects could improve future career prospects, particularly in a world of artificial intelligence and broad spectrum embedding of information technology.

Science by Simulation, Volume 1: A Mezze of Mathematical Models retails for US$48 / £40 (paperback) and US$88 / £75 (hardcover) and is also available in electronic formats. To order or know more about the book, visit http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/Q0327.

###

About the Author

Dr Andrew French has taught Physics and Mathematics at Winchester College since 2011. Previously he taught at Sherborne School, and worked in industry for eight years as a Radar Systems Engineer on a wide range of projects, from meteorological sensors and wind farms to signal processing algorithms associated with marine and land-based systems. While in industry, he completed a PhD with University College London on aspects of phased-array radars in 2010. He also holds a postgraduate Master of Philosophy in Fluid Dynamics from the BP Institute in Cambridge and a PGCSE in Secondary Mathematics teaching from Southampton University. Dr French is currently working on a number of educational research projects: The Eclecticon resource website, the Science by Simulation series, and he has also co-authored several recent papers in Physics Education relating to epidemiology and numerical methods in introductory calculus teaching.

About World Scientific Publishing Co.

World Scientific Publishing is a leading international independent publisher of books and journals for the scholarly, research and professional communities. World Scientific collaborates with prestigious organisations like the Nobel Foundation and US National Academies Press to bring high quality academic and professional content to researchers and academics worldwide. The company publishes about 600 books and over 140 journals in various fields annually. To find out more about World Scientific, please visit www.worldscientific.com.

For more information, contact WSPC Communications at communications@wspc.com.


Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.