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(From front inside flap) Increasing economic and technological complexity make demands on traditional methods of mathematical modeling that cannot be met fully by use of numerical methods. Numerically obtained solutions fail to give important insights: for instance, they cannot show whether a system has a continuous or a stable response. A new methodology that borrows ideas from several hitherto abstruse branches of mathematics has produced some of the central results of elementary catastrophe theory, such as that system stability tends to break down according to relatively simple patterns that can be explicitly described. It was also discovered that a well determined system may respond to a regular stimulus in a totally chaotic manner. This monograph is the result of two of the author's seminars at the Graduate School of Business, University of Florida, for students in business, engineering and social sciences. It covers all the background material that muts be understood by the non-specialist before the substantive issues and applications can be discussed. (From back inside flap) Professor Antal Majthay is Department Chairman at the Graduate School of Business Administration, of the University of Florida