ABSTRACT
Mathematical problems are essential in almost all aspects of scientific and engineering research. The mathematical models should normally be established first, then, the solutions of the models under investigation can be obtained. The development of modern sciences and engineering depends heavily on mathematics. However, the research interests of pure mathematicians are different from other scientists and engineers. Mathematicians are often more interested in finding the analytical or closed-form solutions to mathematical problems. The emerging digital computers fueled the developments of numerical as well as symbolic computation techniques. Many people are using conventional computer languages, such as C and Fortran, in their research. Needless to say that these languages were very useful, and they were the low-level supporting languages of the computer mathematics languages such as MATLAB. However, for the modern scientific and engineering researchers, these languages are not adequate for solving their complicated computational problems. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
