Brief introduction to stochastic differential equations and applications in Biology and Finance

The purpose is to give a sketchy beginner’s introduction to stochastic differential equations (SDE) and illustrate their usefulness through simple examples of application in Biology and Finance when environmental or market random fluctuations influence the dynamical behaviour of living beings, populations or financial assets. Two interesting well-known points will be stressed. The first is that the exact same mathematical models are used to study quite different phenomena. The second, based on a brief reference to some areas of research on SDE and applications developed in CIMA, concerns the importance of cross-fertilization between theory and applications.