"Economics involves a lot of math"

People tend to make sweeping assumptions about economics that discourage further study. The first major assumption I wrote about last week is that economics is about money, which isn’t true. If you haven’t read that post, you can find it here.

Today, we tackle the second popular assumption:

For whatever reason, a lot of people don’t like math. I’m not really sure why this is, but this apprehension/hatred of math prevents many from interacting with economics. Math is the bogeyman that makes people say, “I’m not smart enough for that”.

In a way, this assumption is true. In higher levels of economic study, there is a lot of math. For those of us not pursuing a master’s or doctorate in economics, we don’t need to worry about it.

A few weeks ago, I said that you shouldn’t need an advanced degree to know what’s going on in the economy. In the same way, you don’t need to have taken advanced math courses to understand economics.

After a quick sidebar with the crystal ball I keep on my desk, I don’t foresee any math in this blog beyond addition, subtraction, and multiplication... maybe some division if we’re feeling wild. If you have taken and passed high school algebra, you already know more than you need to.1

This blog will certainly not contain derivatives, multi-page proofs, or multivariate calculus. Find some other nerd’s blog if you’re into that freaky stuff.

Understanding economic principles requires critical thinking, logic, and the ability to analyze cause-and-effect relationships. Any math involved is an expression of these things, to demonstrate that what is true intuitively is also true empirically.

In the future, I’m sure I will run across assumptions about economics that fall into some new category. At that point, I’ll write about it. For now, I feel I have covered enough introductory information to dive into economics in its own terms.