This textbook aims to fill the gap between those that offer a
theoretical treatment without many applications and those that present
and apply formulas without appropriately deriving them. The balance
achieved will give readers a fundamental understanding of key financial
ideas and tools that form the basis for building realistic models,
including those that may become proprietary. Numerous carefully chosen
examples and exercises reinforce the student's conceptual understanding
and facility with applications. The exercises are divided into
conceptual, application-based, and theoretical problems, which probe the
material deeper.
The book is aimed toward advanced undergraduates and first-year graduate
students who are new to finance or want a more rigorous treatment of the
mathematical models used within. While no background in finance is
assumed, prerequisite math courses include multivariable calculus,
probability, and linear algebra. The authors introduce additional
mathematical tools as needed. The entire textbook is appropriate for a
single year-long course on introductory mathematical finance. The
self-contained design of the text allows for instructor flexibility in
topics courses and those focusing on financial derivatives. Moreover,
the text is useful for mathematicians, physicists, and engineers who
want to learn finance via an approach that builds their financial
intuition and is explicit about model building, as well as business
school students who want a treatment of finance that is deeper but not
overly theoretical.