This textbook aims to fill the gap between those that offer atheoretical treatment without many applications and those that presentand apply formulas without appropriately deriving them. The balanceachieved will give readers a fundamental understanding of key financialideas and tools that form the basis for building realistic models,including those that may become proprietary. Numerous carefully chosenexamples and exercises reinforce the students conceptual understandingand facility with applications. The exercises are divided intoconceptual, application-based, and theoretical problems, which probe thematerial deeper.

The book is aimed toward advanced undergraduates and first-year graduatestudents who are new to finance or want a more rigorous treatment of themathematical models used within. While no background in finance isassumed, prerequisite math courses include multivariable calculus,probability, and linear algebra. The authors introduce additionalmathematical tools as needed. The entire textbook is appropriate for asingle year-long course on introductory mathematical finance. Theself-contained design of the text allows for instructor flexibility intopics courses and those focusing on financial derivatives. Moreover,the text is useful for mathematicians, physicists, and engineers whowant to learn finance via an approach that builds their financialintuition and is explicit about model building, as well as businessschool students who want a treatment of finance that is deeper but not overly theoretical.