“Choose Your Own Adventure in Mathematical Modeling” Book Project

Call for Contributions to the book:

The SIAG-ED officers (Shelley B. Poole, Mario Bañuelos, Haley Yaple, and Emek Kose) began a large mathematical modeling book project, with the working title “Choose Your Own Adventure in Mathematical Modeling.” We are in communication with the SIAM editorial board, a not-for-profit publisher. At this time we are actively recruiting additional contributors.

There is such diversity in the courses and content taught under the umbrella of mathematical modeling. Currently, faculty often assemble their own resources to meet the needs of their course. Our book is for instructors who may have the content knowledge, but not the resources to build a course or specific course topics themselves: those who need the support of a textbook. 

While of course it’s impossible to meet the needs of every mathematical modeling course, we hope to get as close as possible. We want to make mathematical modeling more available and accessible to students and faculty through this project. “Choose Your Own Adventure in Mathematical Modeling” is named to describe its format: standalone chapters of mathematical modeling content. Our goal is to allow faculty to select the chapters for their course so that students can choose to purchase only the necessary sections, though the full book will also be available. 

A drafted chapter is provided here as an example of our desired format and tone. We are writing the text for junior-level mathematics students who have completed the calculus sequence, and potentially also differential equations. We ask that any contributions are accessible to the same audience and that all sections stand on their own, including clear explanation of any material that might otherwise be considered a prerequisite.

The final text will be built based on contributions. Here is an outline of topics we expect to see, though you should not consider this list exhaustive or prescriptive.

  1. Mathematical modeling: the Core Intro
    1. Mathematical modeling process
    2. Programming Tutorials/Resources
  2. Deterministic Modeling
    1. Difference equations
    2. Differential equations
    3. Systems of differential equations
    4. Dimensional analysis
  3. Stochastic Modeling
    1. Markov chains
    2. Differential equations
    3. Uncertainty Quantification
  4. Computational and Data-Driven Modeling
    1. Numerical Methods
    2. Parameter Estimation
    3. Recommendation systems
    4. Deep learning
  5. Agent-Based Modeling 

We are seeking authors who teach topics in mathematical modeling to provide a voice for that content in our text as a standalone chapter. This is an open solicitation for contributions to this text. 

Submission Guidelines:

We envision this collection to involve 15-25 contributions, each an individual self contained chapter. 

Please submit the intent form by August 15th, 2022 for consideration. All contributions are encouraged and welcome. We want to know what you want to see in a modeling textbook, so if you have ideas beyond the above outline please don’t hesitate to share them. You may submit for multiple topics/chapters and tentative ideas are also appropriate, as are coauthoring requests. We will follow up with you on your proposal. We intend to be proactive in helping prospective contributors as they develop their chapters, for example, by scheduling working sessions to support authors.

We will ask for a first draft by January 16th, 2023. The following stage of this project will be editing and working within our community of authors to make a cohesive and consistent text. We will provide feedback and manage the editing in Spring 2023. If you submit a chapter, you may also get a peek at first drafts for other chapters of the text (an exciting prospect for those who love modeling!) and the opportunity to pilot the material in your course. 

Suggested outline of individual chapters

  1. State all prerequisites
  2. State the learning objectives
  3. State the learning outcomes
  4. Include necessary background
  5. Emphasize the modeling process
  6. Evaluate the models
  7. Exercises
  8. Mini models
  9. Larger projects

Intent to Submit Form: https://forms.gle/ctXhGVoHNWrAPMTi8

We’re excited to hear what you can bring to our book project! We look forward to your ideas.

Sincerely,

Your SIAG-ED Officers

Shelley B. Poole, Secretary

Mario Bañuelos, Program Director

Haley Yaple, Vice Chair

Emek Kose, Chair