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Population in cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2016

C. W. Kilmister
C. W. Kilmister*
Affiliation:
King’s College, London WC2R 2LS
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Extract

I want to deal with one piece of applied mathematics which is a good example of the way in which—in nearly all applications of mathematics—the important steps are those of tentative model-building, and the testing of such models against reality. It is this feature that makes mechanics such an atypical case; there the model, Newton’s laws, is made for one beforehand. In the present instance the initial problem, whose partial solution leads, as usual, to other problems, can be stated very simply: in most cities the population density, σ, tends to fall off with distance, r, from the centre.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 60 , Issue 411 , March 1976 , pp. 11 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1976

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