<p>Hi
How important is it to be good/excellent at Maths if you hope to go into investment banking and finance?</p>
<p>My favourite classes are economics, business and accounting. While I find commerce fascinating and can readily handle basic computation (as would be used in econ, accounting i.e. adding, subtracting), maths itself, particularly topics like algebra, calculus, differentiation, completely perplex me. I'm also scoring badly in Math at the moment. </p>
<p>Would a major in finance be too mathematically orientated/challenging?</p>
<p>Agreed, honestly the math is not challenging at all, you barely need Calculus in the program I'm in, maybe it would help in some of the upper level finance classes. Its much more about simple calculations and being able to understand and analyze numbers, as opposed to straight up complex math as far as I understand.</p>
<p>"Aside from finding the derivative of some textbook primary function... you probably won't ever need Calculus in your Finance program."</p>
<p>Wrong!!!</p>
<p>There is a lot of math in upper level finance courses, like in financial modeling, where you have linear algebra, A LOT of statistic, some calc (basic DEQ).<br>
Then, down the road (MS in finance), we have stochastic calculus (which req. knowledge of differentiation and integration).<br>
Besides, you know how they say, makes sharpens your mind. And while, you don't have to be math major/minor, it is crucial for ib or pretty much any investing prof. to be good with math.</p>
<p>I forgot the movie, but then ibanker was asked how he got rich, he answered:" Simple, you just have to be good with numbers and people".</p>
<p>But how much of your upper-level financial math do employ in the field (without using Excel and Computers)? I would argue that math is important, however, the most important thing is being able to understand the significance of certain numbers. This is not to say that math isn't important; I would suggest you try the Barron's Math SAT Book (this may sound odd but it works). The book takes a more reason based approach to math and helps you see it as more than computation (which most HS math makes it out to be). Also, one of the things I found that is most helpful is going through the logic of the math to see how it makes "sense" and not just how it is correct.</p>
<p>The amount of math you need to know depends entirely on what your role is in the bank. There are dozens of totally different jobs in any given investment bank. Some only require you to be able to do very quick and accurate back-of-the-envelope calculations using set valuation formulas, or to input those formulas into excel (sales, IBD). Others require strong ability in stochastic calculus, financial econometrics, and in some cases mathematical analysis (structuring, macro research).</p>