Functional Equations in Several Variables: With Applications to Mathematics, Information Theory and to the Natural and Social Sciences (Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications, Vol. 31)

Deals with modern theory of functional equations in several variables and their applications to mathematics, information theory, and the natural, behavioral, and social sciences. The authors emphasize applications, although not at the expense of theory, and have kept the prerequisites to a minimum; the reader should be familiar with calculus and some simple structures of algebra and have a basic knowledge of Lebesque integration. For the applications the authors have included references and explained the results used. The book is designed so that the chapters may be read almost independently of each other, enabling a selection of material to be chosen for introductory and advanced courses. Each chapter concludes with exercises and further results, 400 in all, which extend and test the material presented in the text. The history of functional equations is well documented in a final chapter which is complemented by an encyclopedic bibliography of over 1600 items. This volume will be of interest to professionals and graduate students in pure and applied mathematics.