Abstract
In this chapter we shall give a very elementary description of mathematical models in general with the basic concepts illustrated by simple examples. The fundamental type of model is the differential equation, which specifies relations between changes in the variables and the variables themselves. An introduction to differential equations is the bulk of this chapter, but we begin with an introductory section containing a simple example for illustration of the most basic concepts.
The whole chapter, except possibly the sections about partial differential equations and well posed problems, can be skipped by the readers who have senior high school or basic college mathematics in fresh memory. These readers can skip Chaps. 3, 4, 5 as well, and go directly to Chap. 6.
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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Gustafsson, B. (2011). Mathematical Models. In: Fundamentals of Scientific Computing. Texts in Computational Science and Engineering, vol 8. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19495-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19495-5_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-19494-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-19495-5
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