The outline of the Harvard course was as follows:
The Wellesley version of the course was taught from the same materials as the Harvard course but with much greater emphasis on scientific applications. The outline of the course was similar with the exception that the unit on the Austrian pension system was replaced by a unit on monitoring water flow in the Charles River, using data downloaded from the U. S. Geological Survey.
Both the Harvard and Wellesley programs had students with a wide range of mathematical skills. Most of the public servants in the Harvard program do not have a strong math background, although a few do, as they were trained as engineers. The students in Wellesley's program are considered to be academic risks, though not necessarily because of their math background. Many lack mathematical skills, but not all. Consequently, both programs needed materials that are accessible to students with weak quantitative preparation yet challenging for strong students. The web and spreadsheet materials we used were very satisfactory in this regard. The materials involve only basic mathematics (percentages, linear growth, exponential growth) yet some of the questions asked are quite deep. Thus, weak students can review a variety of skills (arithmetic, graphing, basic algebra) at the same time that strong students explore mathematical modeling. The questions help students gain a deeper understanding of topics such as units and dimension, linear growth, exponential growth, logistic growth, rate of change and accumulated change. The exercises require students to construct models that describe realistic situations and, in so doing, to think about the mathematical relations exhibited by various real-world phenomena.