Mathematical Modeling

aWe are living in a science and technology based world with complex interrelationships of all types. We have large scale systems like Environmental Systems, Ecological Systems, Transportation Systems, and National Planning Systems and so on. One important technique for understanding these and similar other large scale systems is that of Mathematical Modelling. The technique of Mathematical Modelling has always been available, but its power has increased in direct proportion to the increase of complexity of systems, due to the advent of powerful computers and equally powerful developments in all mathematical sciences.
The course which students of science and technology need is an integrated course in mathematical modelling which will of course include the mathematical concepts necessary for an understanding of such techniques, and which will discuss mathematical modelling as such in the total context of modelling process as a whole. The design, construction and execution of such a course require a joint effort on the part of mathematicians, scientists and technologists. Each academic has to be prepared to look at the other side of the fence and to sit right across it, because if he/she is not prepared to do this, he has no right to expect his students to make acrobatic intellectual leaps from one side to the fence to the other. Such acrobatic intellectual leaps are not necessary if the philosophy and expertise of mathematical modelling is truly the central theme of the course.