The essential similarity and differences between mathematical modeling and programming

This note describes mathematical modeling and programming and determines that they are essentially the same activity. However, differences in the way that the products of the two activities are used force them to be applied in very different ways with very different goals. A result of these differences is that programming is harder than mathematical modeling, in that the model that the former produces must be more complete than the model that the latter produces. This note concludes with questions raised to encourage a discussion on the issues.