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War stories from applied math. Undergraduate consultancy projects. (English) Zbl 1125.00006

MAA Notes 71. Washington, DC: Mathematical Association of America (MAA) (ISBN 0-88385-181-4/pbk). vii, 147 p. (2007).
From the back cover: This book deals with issues involved in setting up and running a program which allows undergraduate students to work on problems from real world sources. A number of practitioners share their experiences with the reader. How are such programs set up and what resources are required? How are clients found? What problems are suitable for students to work on? What difficulties can be anticipated and how can they be resolved? What benefits do the clients derive from the students’ work and what do the students get out of such projects? These issues and others like them are explored in a number of different academic environments. It is the contention of this book that students develop an appreciation of mathematics and its usefulness by engaging in programs such as those described here. Furthermore it is possible to develop such programs for a variety of student audiences over a wide spectrum of colleges and universities. A chapter is devoted to relevant materials available from the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP). Lists of student projects and examples of their work are provided. There is also a discussion of the pros and cons of consultancy projects by representatives of industry familiar with such projects.

MSC:

00A35 Methodology of mathematics
00A69 General applied mathematics