What you might not know is that if you can connect things like that…movies, books, anything else with a plot…you will probably really dig and enjoy economics. Because economics is about connecting things. Money, people, industry.

People who wonder: If there is an iPod, where do all the parts come from? Where do the people live that make those parts? What resources are used in those different parts of the world – not just to make the iPod but the electricity bill of the person who screws the left hand screw in on the backside of the iPod. Where they eat lunch?

• If you have ever driven along a long and lonely stretch of road and seen a little house in the middle of nowhere and wondered, “What do they do to live?”
• If you have ever walked along a city street, looked up at a skyscraper and wondered, “What do they all do to live?”
• If you have ever walked past a person and truly wondered what they did and bought and consumed in their daily life…

You are interested in economics.

Tracing the lightbulb in your bedroom to the person who gets up at 2am to go to work and help create that lightbulb in a factory to the person who works at the electricity company to bring the light to fruition to the person who built the bedroom in the first place.

So many connecting webs, it’s more intricate than any movie or book plot. It’s life, and it’s magical in its interconnectivity.

You can follow and trace where everything leads, but economists are trying to predict what happens next. They’re trying to solve the most complex movie plots ever devised, because they are not devised and there is no set, logical ending. That’s what makes it so intereting.

Everything has a plot. People doing things and interacting with other people. They have money that’s never generally specified that comes from a job that exists to follow the plotline and is always enough for whatever the people in the book need – unless it is a specific plot point that there is not enough money – then it becomes part of the story.

But for most people, money is everything. I don’t mean the greedy kind of money-grubbing that most people go to in their brains when they thing about those people - the people who care about money more than anything. No one really wants to admit that money is a driving force in life. Admitting to focusing on money is some kind of strange societal sin.

The thing is, who among us is not focused – at least in the back burner of our minds – on bills, savings accounts and trying to make sure you and your spouse aren’t going to be existing on cat food when retirement time comes?

The plot of our lives is tangled with money just as much as eating or bathing or shopping or anything else. Even if we don’t want to think about it, pretending money isn’t part of our daily existence does not bode well for successful money management.

So maybe the first step to understanding economics is to understand how often you – or I – think about money. How often, what kinds of thoughts…just so you, too, can stand in a place of honesty and know where you’re starting from.

Oh, and in case you’re curious…I like Fitzgerald a lot. Also, most trashy crime novels. I like my entertainment lowbrow.

If you don’t know where you are, you can’t possibly know where you’re going.

That happens to me a lot. I’ll be in the bookstore and get this feeling the perfect book is there and it’s just waiting for me to find it. This is – in my mind – me wandering through the bookstore looking like an aimless idiot, but I can’t stop, because there are so many answers in a bookstore if only I knew where to look. 

But, and this doesn’t happen often, I look to the side and see a book called 30-Second Economics. Which is kind of weird because I’m pretty sure I can’t even say economics in thirty seconds if I’m not concentrating. I open the book to leaf through it and there are these super-abbreviated biographies of economists and descriptions of their major theories and the backbone of the theory. From what I can tell, there isn’t any bias except for leading questions that may give pause for thought.

Talk about having a book that makes you able to not sound like an idiot at a dinner party! (Ok, I don’t go to dinner parties and when I do no one else wants to talk about economics and until I can figure out how to get on the phone with Russ Roberts and just talk for a little bit I’m talking about fabulous, imaginary dinner parties where everyone is all up to date on economic theory and I can just wander the room and bask in the knowledge all around me.)

Back to reality, I know, I know, the book.

While a book like this can’t possibly cover all the pitfalls and points of every theory, it does a good job of giving you the basics. Enough that you will know what something is about, but you’re not going to have to use the left side of your brain a whole lot. (That’s the math half, right?)

There’s a glossary that covers fun and interesting words. It will, at the very least, let you read jargon-filled articles and without too much effort know what you’re reading.

If you want a coffee-table book or to make people think you’re really smart, it’s not a bad book to own. It’s even better if you actually read it.

Originally Posted January 21, 2011

The basis for business math comes in the form of Finite Math. Mostly algebra based with some geometry thrown in for good measure, I’m on chapter 1.2 and finding that it’s not about studying.

More than anything else it seems to be about going back into my long-term memory and dredging things up that I thought I forgot but are there, lurking in the recesses of my mind.

You know, like y=mx+b, which I worked on for hours before it finally clicked and I was able to graph a chart of dates and values by making X=0 instead of X=1995 (the year) and then scaling up from zero instead of trying to just “figure it out” – I’m glad I’m doing it and I’m doing every possible extra exercise in the homework and online because I know this is one of the fundamental formulas that I will probably use the rest of my life.

Of course, I’m not 100% sure of that because after this come math classes like Stats and Econometrics. Which may have their very own formulas. Ok, I’m *sure* they have their very own formulas, that I just don’t know yet.

I like the Pearson CourseCompass site with My Math Lab. It gives you multiple assignments and other things the instructor puts in to help really get the material. As long as you just do the work and keep doing it until you understand it, I really think that I was all wrong about math as a child.

Because it’s not the math that killed me, it was memorizing the equations. That was always so difficult. Now I don’t have to because the formulas will be included with the test. That means I can focus more on what formula is appropriate in a situation, which is WAY easier.

Update (5/23/11)

I’m 8 weeks into the course…maybe 9…and we’ve covered SO much. From finance math to Truth Tables and I’ve been really enjoying it all. My downfall seems to be reversing the numbers 2 and 5 or forgetting to carry over a negative sign while doing matrix calculations.

This is a great class, and I’m glad I chose it over calculus. I may still need to take calculus and that’s fine (part of me really wants to minor in math with my econ major when I transfer in the Fall). The thing is, I don’t remember ever having to really work to understand something before. Working makes understanding that much more awesome when the light bulb moment happens.

Seems pretty easy to me.

The orientation was great, I was the only economics major in the orientation (about 35-40 people) and there were a couple people that asked questions like:

• I saw this was an online class. How many days a week do we come in to class?
• I don’t have a computer, will that be a problem?
• And a whole lot of “Is this the right book?” (sadly, in many cases, the bookstore helpers gave them the wrong book)

That doesn’t even take into account that some people had the wrong book because the Macro and Micro books are EXACTLY THE SAME except one is a bluish green and one is a greenish blue. The writing is that horrible font people use when they’re trying to replicate signatures on the Constitution so it’s tough to read if you’re looking at a Macro book or a Micro book.

Confusion ensued.

On the bright side, I did not have to stay for the second orientation. Heck, I didn’t need to stay for the first one. It really was mostly explaining the online aspects of the class, which I’m an old hand at.

In other news, I joined Phi Theta Kappa today – the honor society for 2-year college students. It could get me scholarships or just another line item on my resume, but either way, I’m now a member of TWO honor societies. Unless you count my Illinois State Scholar award I got in high school.

My honor societies:

1. National Society of Collegiate Scholars
2. Illinois State Scholar
3. Phi Theta Kappa

Of course, if you’re going to be with me on this Economics journey, it’s important to make a note that the big granddaddy of honor societies I want to be part of is Omicron Delta Epsilon. That’s the honor society for economics. It’s my goal.

1. In writing about my economics journey, I will understand it better. Everyone knows that it reinforces learning to explain or teach things to other people. If I have to write in an understandable way about economics and how it relates to everyday life and/or social media, I’ll have a deeper understanding of the subject.
2. I want to chronicle the journey of finally having found something I’m really and truly interested in. Being good at something isn’t enough. You have to want to be good at it to find true success. That’s – hopefully – what I’m doing.

This journey is going to last at least two years from an academic standpoint. If I’m able to go to school full-time while working I’ll be able to finish up an economics degree by the end of Spring semester 2012. If the world doesn’t end *grin* I’ll have the social media expertise from my job coupled with the book knowledge of econometrics, economic theory, and other fun economic topics.

I’ll be enrolling in UIC in the fall. Being in Chicago, I know that the University of Chicago seems the natural choice. It will be if I pursue a Master’s Degree. For the Bachelor’s Degree I’m perfectly content with an awesome school like UIC. Plus it’s in the city so more convenient to my job. I may need to take two-hour lunches at some point to accommodate being able to go to school full time, which means close to the Loop is super-important.

But for now I’m finishing up prerequisites to transfer. This semester is a fun 18-credit-hour load of Spanish, economics, math, and biology. Last semester I managed straight As so I’m hoping I’m able to replicate that this semester.

My fingers and toes are totally crossed.

Reading: Other economics blogs and wondering if I’ll ever be able to understand them.

Listening to: EconTalk: Leamer on the State of Econometrics.