ABSTRACT
The original idea for this book came as the result of conversations we had when based at Cambridge. Prior to that we had both come to planning from numerate first disciplines and, in planning schools at opposite ends of Britain, had independently concluded that there was an obvious gap in the literature on this particular subject. On the one hand, several fine theoretical texts and monographs had been produced which, although extremely useful to academics, were often unnecessarily obfuscating to the less numerate reader assuming, as they did, a mathematical competency far beyond the capabilities of the average undergraduate or practitioner. At the other extreme, there were the more general ‘literature review’ on ‘survey’ texts which briefly introduced the reader to a number of techniques without explaining how these might be applied in practice. Once again, these were of only limited value — popular with the first-year undergraduate but of little use subsequently, and almost useless as far as practitioners were concerned.
