Mathematics for Sustainability

Catalog description

Mathematical analysis of sustainability: measurement, flows, networks, rates of change, uncertainty and risk, applying analysis in decision making; using quantitative evidence to support arguments; examples. MATH 033 Mathematics for Sustainability (3) (GQ) This course is one of several offered by the mathematics department with the goal of helping students from non-technical majors partially satisfy their general education quantification requirement. It is designed to provide an introduction to various mathematical modeling techniques, with an emphasis on examples related to environmental and economic sustainability. The course may be used to fulfill three credits of the GQ requirement for some majors, but it does not serve as a prerequisite for any mathematics courses and should be treated as a terminal course. The course provides students with the mathematical background and quantitative reasoning skills necessary to engage as informed citizens in discussions of sustainability related to climate change, resources, pollution, recycling, economic change, and similar matters of public interest. Students apply these skills through writing projects that require quantitative evidence to support an argument. The mathematical content of the course spans six key areas: "measuring" (representing information by numbers, problems of measurement, units, estimation skills); "flowing" (building and analyzing stock-flow models, calculations using units of energy and power, dynamic equilibria in stock-flow systems, the energy balance of the earth-sun system and the greenhouse effect); "connecting" (networks, the bystander effect, feedbacks in stock-flow models); "changing" (out-of-equilibrium stock-flow systems, exponential models, stability of equilibria in stock-flow systems, sensitivity of equilibria to changes in a parameter, tipping points in stock-flow models); "risking" (probability, expectation, bayesian inference, risk vs uncertainty; "deciding" (discounting, uses and limitations of cost-benefit analysis, introduction to game theory and the tragedy of the commons, market-based mechanisms for pollution abatement, ethical considerations).