Applied Maths is more than just Mechanics and Statistics. The MEI board also recognises Decision Maths, Numerical Methods, and possibly Differential Equations and the increasing possibilities of computational Mathematics. OCR agrees with the Decision Maths.
Wikipedia [here] suggests we might study applicable mathematics, with which I agree. Alternatively, if we consider areas of mathematics, we might separate out:
• Probability and statistics
• Computational sciences which includes numerical analysis, linear algebra and linear programming.
• Physical sciences, meaning mechanics in all its forms
• Other mathematical sciences, which would include operations research
This breakdown has no obvious place for discrete mathematics (as opposed to the continuous mathematics exemplified by calculus and analysis). I’d place it in applied maths rather than pure, but it seems to be an ill-defined topic area. The link points to a list of topics that would be includable within such a title.
DJS 20171208
20180824 several diagrams added resulting from Google search for (i) maths modelling diagrams such as MEI used to use and (ii) the learning cycle. I’d have liked having something along these lines in my classroom; I used the MEI version (not found today) heavily.
