Mathematical Modeling Using Microsoft Excel

摘要

The entry into higher mathematics begins with calculus. Rarely, however, does thecalculus student recognize the full power and applications for the mathematical concepts and tools that are taught. Frank R. Giordano, Maurice D. Weir, and William P. Fox produced A First Course in Mathematical Modeling a unique text designed to address this shortcoming and teach the student how to identify, formulate, and interpret the real world in mathematical terms. Mathematical modeling is the application of mathematics to explain or predict real world behavior. Often real world data are collected and used to veriiy or validate (and sometimes formulate) a hypothetical model or scenario. Inevitably, in such situations, it is desirable and necessary to have computational support available to analyze the large amounts of data. Certainly this eliminates the tedious and inefficient hand calculations necessary to validate and apply the model (assuming the calculations can even be reasonably done by hand). The primary purpose of Mathematical Modeling Using Microsoft Excel is to provide instructions and examples for using the spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel to support a wide range of mathematical modeling applications. Microsoft Excel is a powerful spreadsheet program which allows the user to organize numerical data into an easy to follow on-screen grid of columns and rows. Our version of Excel is based on Microsoft Windows. In this text, it is not the intent to teach mathematical modeling, but rather to provide computer support for most of the modeling topics covered in A First Course in Mathematical Modeling. The examples given here are support that text as well.