A past generation of undergraduate students studying Honours Mathematics would be highly able competitive enthusiastic self-motivated and generally male comprising a small fraction of the age group. There were also very few subject specific guides to help them. Today’s students come from a much larger slice of the age cohort are often unsure of what they want to study and many enter combined or joint courses. They seem much less mathematically prepared for the rigours of their courses and usually have at least as many females in their class as males. In addition to those on such courses most undergraduates on a Business Engineering or Science degree have to study some form of mathematics as part of their course. However there are now a number of suitable study guides to help them. Thus Peter Kahn has written this text “to help you study mathematics and its applications as effectively as possible” where the “you” are such “undergraduate students”.
