These notes serve as an introduction to stochastic theories which are useful in population biology; they are based on a course given at the Courant Institute, New York, in the Spring of 1974. In order to make the material. accessible to a wide audience, it is assumed that the reader has only a slight acquaintance with probability theory and differential equations. The more sophisticated topics, such as the qualitative behavior of nonlinear models, are approached through a succession of simpler problems. Emphasis is placed upon intuitive interpretations, rather than upon formal proofs. In most...