<p>I'm considering majoring in Econ as an undergrad since some colleges I'm interested in don't necessarily offer undergrad business majors. However, I can't exactly say I enjoy doing math. How much math does Econ actually involve -- and is it complicated math (Calculus)? </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>I dunno, is the pope catholic? Does a bear defecate in the woods?</p>
<p>I’m really only worried about three classes; intermediate micro, econometrics and a game theory course. The rest of the undergrad econ courses are really just theory based. I’ve sat in on a money and banking course and Econ development of the u.s. course and neither were bad. There was a econ strategy course that I didn’t understand a bit of, but it was at the end of the semester.</p>
<p>No economics at a non phd level requires simple basic math. I am a math and physics major with a minor in economics and I find economics math to be elementary. Econometrics vs Statistics math major courses, econometrics is much easier (some universities might allow you to substitute some if not all the statistics courses for econometrics). Game theory requires more thinking than almost all economic courses, but not much math at all. You are not going to be using advance calculus or real analysis, so do not worry.</p>
<p>Introductory Econometrics can be moderately challenging math-wise or not, depending on the focus of your professor. For example, there’s some calculus involved in deriving certain equations that you’ll be using. For the most part though, somebody did all the hard calculus decades ago so you don’t have to. Kind of like the way Newton did most of the calculus to get you to “Force=Mass * Acceleration”. Better yet, most of econometrics is done on computer software anyway! So if you use “RateMyProfessor” well, look at each professor’s old syllabus, you have a good chance to pick an econometrics professor who won’t require you to do difficult math and instead focus on practical problems. </p>
<p>While generally classes which are less quantitative and hard aren’t as valuable, I don’t think this is the case with Econometrics. What you want to learn is how to look at data with popular software packages, how to interpret outputs, deal with problems(serial correlation, heteroskedasticity, etc). That’s assuming you don’t want to get your PhD anyway(math will start getting really hard at that point).</p>