Growth and diffusion phenomena

by Banks, Robert

Diffusion and growth phenomena abound in the real world surrounding us. Some examples are growth of the world's population, growth rates of humans, public interest in news events, growth and decline of central city populations, pollution of rivers, adoption of agricultural innovations, and spreading of epidemics and migration of insects. These and numerous other phenomena are illustrations of typical growth and diffusion problems confronted in many branches of the physical, biological and social sciences as well as in various areas of agriculture, business, education, engineering, medicine and public health. The book presents a large number of mathematical models to provide frameworks for the analysis and display of many of these. The models developed and utilized commence with relatively simple exponential, logistic and normal distribution functions. Considerable attention is given to time dependent growth coefficients and carrying capacities. The topics of discrete and distributed ti