The origin of this book can be traced to courses on financial
mathematics taught by us at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Warsaw
University of Technology (Politechnika Warszawska) and Institut National
Polytechnique de Grenoble. Our initial aim was to write a short text around
the material used in two one-semester graduate courses attended by students
with diverse disciplinary backgrounds (mathematics, physics, computer
science, engineering, economics and commerce). The anticipated diversity of
potential readers explains the somewhat unusual way in which the book is
written. It starts at a very elementary mathematical level and does not
assume any prior knowledge of financial markets.