'... a well organized and well written text. The book 'does what it says on the cover', is written in plain English and I think is an excellent introductory text. It will be useful to students from a wide range of backgrounds and an essential complement to the standard undergraduate course which embeds mathematical finance into probability theory. Finally, with it being studded with references, it provides an easy entry into deeper material.' Chris Barnett, UK Nonlinear News ' ... this is a very accessible basic introduction to the subject and Des Higham's unique writing style with many quotes and side remarks makes the reading even more enjoyable.' L. Grune, Z. Angew. Math. Mech. 'A colleague and I use Desmond Higham's financial options book in our Computational Finance and Applied Optimal (stochastic) Control courses as a very good computational reference, but some of the motivations are very good too, such as call-put parity and the Black-Scholes derivation. Our students find it very helpful for its...