Considering Taking Micro And Macro Econ..How Much Math Involved?

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

I'm not nearly as intelligent as the others posting in this thread, so maybe I can help explain at a non-intimidating level.


I'm in my 3rd year of accounting, which is hilarious because I hate math, and usually get B's or C's in math classes. We were required to take introductory micro and macro, and I didn't have calculus for either one.

Intro classes are extremely simple in terms of math: it is merely basic algebra, and they spoon-feed you the formulas. What is most important at the intro level is understanding the graphs and what it is saying, and as long as you pay attention and ask questions about what you are unsure of, you should be fine. Towards the end of macro, you will most likely have to understand what happens when an event on one graph changes things on one or two additional, related graphs. This is the hardest part, but as long as you study this last part well, you should be fine.

Those were the only economics courses I've taken so far for undergrad. I intend to do a Masters in management & economics of government & business relations, and just finished taking a Masters-level course on the Economics of the EU at Bocconi University in Italy. Out of 22 students, only 4 of us were not already economics students, and there were a series of graphs regarding world trade that I had never encountered. However, after just asking the others to explain them, I understood them with minimal effort.

Introductory micro and macro are nothing to worry about if you are already a student who goes to class, studies, takes notes, pays attention, and gets at least decent grades. There is very little math beyond basic algebra.

Calculus was also the most useless and confusing class I have ever taken, but that may have been because my professor was a total idiot (we started out with 30 students in the course. After the drop date, 16 remained. Only 9 of us passed. The other calc teacher had significantly better student performance; almost everyone passed with few dropouts).

I have an interest in economics, but I've found that economics is more about if you can understand and explain the "story" that is occuring in various scenarios. As long as you remember the formulas, there's very little math.