Engineers, natural scientists and, increasingly, researchers and practitioners working in economics and other social sciences, use mathematical modelling to solve problems arising in their disciplines. There are at least two identifiable kinds of mathematical modelling. One involves translating the rules of nature or society into mathematical formulae, applying mathematical methods to analyse them and then trying to understand the implications of the obtained results for the original disciplines. The other kind is to use mathematical reasoning to solve practical industrial or engineering problems without necessarily building a mathematical theory for them.

This book is predominantly concerned with the first kind of modelling: that is, with the analysis and interpretation of models of phenomena and processes occurring in the real world. It is important to understand, however, that models only give simplified descriptions of real-life problems but, nevertheless, they can be expressed in terms of mathematical equations and thus can be solved in one way or another.