Why Mathematical Models?

If you are a member of the set of people to whom this article is addressed, that is, if you are an undergraduate student in psychology, you certainly possess some or all of the following characteristics: (a) you are interested in understanding behavior; (b) you are concerned about a number of environmental, social, and political issues; (c) you find the topics on the "soft" side of psychology somewhat more interesting than the topics on the "hard" side of psychology; (d) you know little, if anything, about mathematical psychology (and are somewhat suspicious of the whole endeavor); and (e) you do not have the time to do everything that you want to do. Given an audience with those characteristics, this article has relatively limited goals. It says a little about what mathematical models are, gives two specific examples, and indicates why you should care to know something about mathematical models. There is a real question as to whether or not undergraduate students in psychology should spend a chunk of their limited time on mathematical psychology. For some of you the question does not exist because no such course exists among the undergraduate courses available to you. The absence of such a course is sometimes by design— some of those in charge of undergraduate curricula in psychology do not feel that such a course is appropriate for undergraduates—and is sometimes necessitated by there being no faculty member who is (or feels he is) qualified to teach such a course. Teaching such a course is not easy; at least it is not easy to teach it well. In fact, for those of you at schools where there is a course of sorts in mathematical psychology, the way it is taught is