/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.11029930]

is econ just a math major for people with non-zero chances of getting laid?

[Anonymous No.11029947]

>>11029930
econ majors typically are retarded at math. that’s why their field translates all the math into “if you move this line to the left then the tip of the triangle moves ... LEFT!!!!”

econ majors are more like psych majors with more Y chromosomes

[Anonymous No.11029964]

>>11029930
Yes.
>>11029947
>he hasn't extensively studied isometric actions of R^n on graphs of functions

[Anonymous No.11029969]

>>11029964
>he thinks Econ has advanced math

[Anonymous No.11029979]

>>11029969
>he doesn't know economics lives and breathes statistics, probability, dynamic programming, other subjects in optimization, dynamical systems, partial differential equations, convex analysis and game theory

[Anonymous No.11029988]

op here
sorry for starting this thread please just stop fighting it's making me sad

[Anonymous No.11030001]

>>11029969
As a former econ major I'll have to disagree with OP. Econ (the subject) can be studied with the rigor of advanced math, but you'll never find it in the econ major's curriculum.
For example, what >>11029964 describes is better interpreted economically as a foliation on a manifold, since assuming configuration spaces to be Euclidean is even less justified in economics than it is in physics, say. But you can't get a discussion on that with anyone in the econ department, except possibly the profs who transferred in from math/physics.

[Anonymous No.11030005]

>>11029979
>>11030001
when was the last time an economist won the fields medal? i forget...

[Anonymous No.11030006]

>>11030005
>thinking a medal matters more than controlling the world economy

[Anonymous No.11030017]

>>11030006
>muh best economist at math was pic related
>nevermind he was schizophrenic

only schizos try to do economics mathematically. most of them do fine with undergrad-level math making up economic theories that only by a big stretch of the imagination have anything real to say empirically.

[Anonymous No.11030083]

>>11030017
>Win medal in economics
>Used a taxi in 2015
Explain this, are economists that bad at economics?

[Anonymous No.11030103]

>>11029930
Undergrad econ doesn’t have much math

[Anonymous No.11030109]

>>11029930
>non-zero
No.

[Anonymous No.11030135]

>>11029930
Economics is a pseudo religion that's used to rationalize pretty much everything that causes human misery and is totally unsustainable.

[Anonymous No.11030164]

I've heard people say that Maths has no place in economics. How true is this? Just how much more important are the ideas behind economics than the raw numbers?

[Anonymous No.11030242]

>>11030164
>Maths has no place in economics.
Only drooling retards actually defend that. Even Marx and serious marxists don't defend that, it's essentially only infiltrated sociologists and austrians.
Lads like Keynes, Schumpeter and most half decent economists understand that qualitative and quantitative analysis need to complement each other to produce the best results.

[Anonymous No.11030247]

>>11029930
I was in a PhD program that sat in a Math department but was in collaboration with Econ and Stats. Modern micro Uses a fair amount of mathematical thinking, but the notation is just horrendous and the ideas aren’t particularly mathematically deep.

Still, I think some of the behavioral work is interesting and largely consists of finding discrepancies between modeled behavior and observed. The former is often axiomatic and ostensibly reasonable.

TLDR: the math in Econ is kind of annoying, but behavioral finance is still pretty cool

[Anonymous No.11030328]

>>11030242
this

>>11030247
have you done much work on game theory? my maths class has only just gotten to mixed strategies, and I think that it's a really cool field that im considering majoring in.

[Anonymous No.11030384]

>>11030242
You, sir, are retarded.
http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/docs/paradigm.pdf
>>11030164
>Just how much more important are the ideas behind economics than the raw numbers?
Any decent economist is able to translate any mathematical formulation into everyday English. Don't trust anything, as any solid foundation, that cannot be done so.
Ronald Coase is a good example of solid economics.

https://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/file/coase-problem.pdf

Also dive deep into Max Weber, if you want a sociological perspective (though his "Protestant ethic" idea is pretty much dead).

[Anonymous No.11030397]

>>11030247
>Still, I think some of the behavioral work is interesting and largely consists of finding discrepancies between modeled behavior and observed. The former is often axiomatic and ostensibly reasonable.
lol. behavioral econ has its place, but it's not what people make it out to be.
just another tool that economists have been ignoring because of their holy quest devoted to their lord god that is Samuelsonian economics.

[Anonymous No.11030408]

>>11030328
Not much game theory beyond a second year grad class. But the deep results are always just fixed point theorems, right?

[Anonymous No.11030415]

>>11030397
What do people make it out to be?

It wasn’t my field at all, so my knowledge was at best “quals level” but the papers I read were all pretty fun if not particularly applicable. And what’s more mathy than that?

[Anonymous No.11030428]

>>11030408
gt is moving in alternative directions in econ atm.
contextual understanding of models are becoming more important.

most of the original work is headed towards AI programming and computer science.
Other than that, people are trying to work out ways to solve more complex games easily. There is progress with Lemke-Howson Algorithm (designed back in the 60's), but a more contemporary attempt (like in early 2000's by ryan porter) tried to create simpler linear algebra solutions.

[Anonymous No.11030429]

>>11030006
>thinking money has value.
oh my boy, how weak you are; How simple your mind must be; how much cock you must suck for that very last coin.
sad
We all rot to bones my friend. To each his own, but I do say, I surely do not envy you.

[Anonymous No.11030444]

>>11030428
Seems like it isn’t even trying to be economics anymore.

Come to think of it, I do remember seeing a nifty paper about ten years ago that used game theory and some pretty dumbed down trading models to show that you didn’t need a whole lot of agents in a market to obscure intent of the participants. I think it was like 4? Anyway I remember thinking that was neat.

[Anonymous No.11030454]

Thinking there is real math in econ is cute
Although definitely more than in many fields, I'll give you that

If you mention a manifold somewhere or a cohomology, it doesn't automatically make it math
Ket alone dynamic programming and game theory, that's like CS-tier

[Anonymous No.11030462]

>>11030429
>le money has no value because we will all die
I would still rather die wealthy than as a beggar in the streets

[Anonymous No.11030487]

>>11029930
They say mathematics is the second cheapest field to get into - all you need is a pencil, some paper, and a wastebasket.
The cheapest field to get into is economics - there, you only need the pencil and paper.

[Anonymous No.11030541]

>>11030462
>if I'm not filthy rich im a poor beggar.

[Anonymous No.11030561]

>>11030487
That was funny, I haven't heard that one, thanks

[Anonymous No.11030617]

Economics is a very broad field with many flavors so to speak. In my uni (Europe), in the first year, atleast regarding math, we learned analysis up to Riemann integration, convex and concave functions, metric spaces and linear spaces, some multivariate analysis (partial differentiation, tangent hyperplanes, implicit functions, Lagrange multipliers), and matrix algebra and linear transformations.

It depends on your program but economics can be quite mathematical. In the second year we're learning linear programming, functional analysis, difference equations, etc.

[Anonymous No.11030659]

>>11029930
Why don't you ask your mother?

[Anonymous No.11030759]

>>11030617
Americans don't learn this. Inside they imbibe the theology of rational agents and the "free market". It's a seminary school to convert young aryans into enlightened goyim who will spread the gospel of capitalism neoliberalism.

[Anonymous No.11030861]

>>11030759
>Americans don't learn this.
Lie. Source: am a mathematician who has to teach maths to economists. The topics anon mentioned are indeed in any economist's curriculum since so much theory relies on finding optima of utility functions.

[Anonymous No.11030866]

>>11029930
the chances to get laid depend on your attractiveness mostly. not your degree.

you can be a weird ass geologist but looks chad af so you make it.

[Anonymous No.11030880]

>>11029930
wealth of nations is the greatest satire ever written

[Anonymous No.11030910]

>>11030541
Only eurocommies want wealth distribution

[Anonymous No.11030957]

>>>/biz/

[Anonymous No.11031117]

>>11030384
How is he ideologically (or a lack thereof?)?
I'm a bit wary of Marxist interpretations beyond some of his initial criticisms of capitalism, and with interpretations that go ham on either side of the Keynesian/Laissez-faire divide without considering real world results.

[Anonymous No.11031232]

>>11030861
And yet trickle down theory and invisible hands continue to be pervasive among American economists.

[Anonymous No.11031242]

>>11031232
I've told you about my personal experience as well as observations from most used textbooks. It is clear that you 1) have an agenda and bias; 2) have little knowledge about actual math, so continuing this is pretty pointless.

[Anonymous No.11031290]

>>11031242
Not that guy, but is Mas-Colell etal still the gold standard for grad/advanced undergrad microecon nowadays?

I remember reading Osborne+Rubinstein for game theory and Sargent's books for macro in my time (never used any econometrics textbooks except for the occasional dip into Cameron and Trivedi, and I didn't take any mathematical finance so I don't know what they used).
I've also heard that they're finally starting to include programming courses now.

[Anonymous No.11032575]

>>11030083
LMAO

[Anonymous No.11032633]

>>11031117
You mean Weber? I'm not the guy who posted that, but I can tell you he's not a Marxist at all. He has his merits, but he made some rather embarassing critiques of Marxism. I guess you can call him an idealist liberal, altho he wrote little on economics or political economy, he was mostly a sociologist.

[Anonymous No.11032796]

>>11032633
>but he made some rather embarassing critiques of Marxism
How do you mean?

[Anonymous No.11032798]

>>11031117
>>11032633
>>11032796
see, this is why philososhits are even worse than econotards. just forget about math and argue ideology and "oh this dude said some words that are similar to some other dude who said similar words but the other dude said the words first"

[Anonymous No.11032957]

>>11030001
As also a former econ major, Econ can either be businessy garbage, or "rigorous math" which is really just coming up with a conclusion and working backwards to see what retarded assumptions you need to mathematically support your conclusion, with no relation to the real world. At best it's a fun math exercise, at worst it's outright fraudulent.

And then every now and then you have a lost legit mathematician or statistician accidentally wander into the field and completely revolutionize it over the course of a sabbatical, and all the economists just go wut just happened

[Anonymous No.11032959]

>>11030103
If you're not solving lagrangians in your first undergrad econ course, your school doesn't have a real econ major

[Anonymous No.11033445]

>>11032957
This. There are pretty much two econ tracks at my uni, and I'm in the econometrics one where you essentially aren't that far off from having a math degree in addition to your econ degree, and many of us go that path.

The other path only requires differential and integral calculus in addition to babbies first probability and statistics course. The rest of their courses are essentially psychology/gender studies tier, where high school algebra is all you need from that point forward.

[Anonymous No.11033448]

>>11032959
Also this.

[Anonymous No.11033506]

>>11032798
Well duh that's why I'm trying to avoid it, but you can't escape it in econ because it attempts to map human behavior

[Anonymous No.11033525]

>>11032957
>As also a former econ major
>"rigorous math" which is really just coming up with a conclusion and working backwards to see what retarded assumptions you need to mathematically support your conclusion, with no relation to the real world.

I'm sorry that your teachers seem to have failed to imbibe the first point (1) of Alfred Marshall's sage advice:

> [I had] a growing feeling in the later years of my work at the subject that a good mathematical theorem dealing with economic hypotheses was very unlikely to be good economics: and I went more and more on the rules -
> (1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than an engine of inquiry.
> (2) Keep to them till you have done.
> (3) Translate into English.
> (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life.
> (5) Burn the mathematics.
> (6) If you can't succeed in (4), burn (3). This last I did often.

These rules should be inscribed on the walls of every econ department, especially while the dominance of economic thought in everyday life is attracting mathematical Platonists to what is at its core an empirical subject.

[Anonymous No.11033759]

When it comes to economics I feel like solving mathematical equations doesn't matter much if you can't into decisions making.

Economist is much better off learning wisdom, ethics and risk taking than learning math.

[Anonymous No.11033813]

>>11032959
>first
My second. Still counts?
They've changed the curriculum now, tho, so microeconomics is only in the fourth semester. I have absolutely not the foggiest what the fuck were they thinking.