Using Algebra

Useful, straightforward, thought-provoking, and fun: qualities college students rarely ascribe to mathematics. But this text presents just such mathematics, for students who have studied some algebra and want to know more, either to pursue one of the social or life sciences or to satisfy their pure intellectual curiosity. The book consists entirely of problems in which mathematics models familiar phenomena, like automobile fuel consumption, depreciation, population growth, inflation, and the spread of epidemics. To investigate such problems requires algebra: a thorough study of linear equations, unit calculations, the estimation of large numbers. Throughout the book the nature of the problems studied dictates the approach to the mathematics – setting up models and drawing inferences, but little formal manipulation and no proofs identified as such.