WHAT'S IN THE BOOK?

This book is about using mathematics to think about how humans (and other animals) behave. We are hardly surprised to find that mathematics helps us when we deal with physical things. Although relatively few people can do the relevant mathematics, no one is surprised to find out that buildings are built, airplanes are designed, and ships and cars fueled according to some mathematical principle. But people? Or, for that matter, dogs and birds? Does mathematics have a place in understanding how animate, sentient beings move about, remember, quarrel, live with a spouse, or decide to invest in one venture and not another?

I think it does, and I am going to try to convince you. To make things easier to read, I will use the term mathematical modeling to refer to the process of analyzing behavior using the rules of mathematics. Just what this means will be described in more detail later. For now, though, just think of “mathematical modeling” as a shorthand for the clumsier term “using mathematics to study behavior.” I want to convince you, the reader, that mathematical modeling is often a very good thing to do.

I will proceed by example. The chapters in this book present problems in the social and behavioral sciences, and then show how mathematical modeling has helped us to understand them. Before plunging into the details, though, I want to step back and look at the bigger picture.