Introduction to the Mathematics of Finance

This is a graduate level textbook covering an especially broad range of topics. The first part of the book contains a careful but rapid discussion of the basics of linear algebra, including vector spaces, linear transformations, quotient spaces, and isomorphism theorems. The author then proceeds to a discussion of modules, emphasizing a comparison with vector spaces. A thorough discussion of inner product spaces, eigenvalues, eigenvectors, and finite dimensional spectral theory follows, culminating in the finite dimensional spectral theorem for normal operators.  The new edition has been revised and contains a chapter on the QR decomposition, singular values and pseudoinverses, and a chapter on convexity, separation and positive solutions to linear systems. From the reviews of the first edition: "The book is very well written and has a good set of exercises. It is a suitable choice as a graduate textbook as well as a reference book." A.A. Jafarian for ZentralblattMATH

This book is about object-oriented programming and how it is implemented in Microsoft Visual Basic. Accordingly, the book has two separate, but inter­ twined, goals. The first is to describe the general concepts of object orientation and the second is to describe how to do object-oriented programming in Visual Basic. I intend this to be a short, no-nonsense book that can be read through once and then easily referred to at later times. (Long stories about a mythical company and its programming problems are seldom interesting the first time through, let alone the second, third or fourth times!) To read this book, you need only a minimal acquaintance with Visual Basic. In particular, I assume you can construct a simple Visual Basic program and have some rudimentary knowledge of fundamental programming tech­ niques. This book does not teach Visual Basic - it teaches you how to pro­ gram Visual Basic in an object-oriented way. The issue here is not how much Visual Basic you already know - it is that you want to learn about object­ oriented programming techniques. With regard to the first goal of the book, it is my feeling that a discussion of the underlying concepts of object orientation Oust what is an object, a class, encapsulation, abstraction, and so on) is essential in order to take full advan­ tage of any object-oriented language. Simply put, it will help you understand what you are doing if you know why you are doing it.