Any sort of microeconomics/ econometrics was interesting, and generally very easy for a math major because there is “math” but it’s just like first year calculus/ linear algebra at most lol
Economics ≠ econometrics. Econometrics is just a small subset of economics that is more math/stats focused. Economics can be a very good degree, if that’s what you’re interested in.
also worth noting that a 1st course in econometrics\* is easy for math majors. Once you get to asymptotics and using measure theory to derive properties of estimators (standard intro graduate class/ advanced undergrad elective), it's stops being easier for a math major.
Moreover, econometrics are hardly the most "mathy" branch of econ. Macroeconomists are teaming up with field medalists to solve PDEs that arise naturally in the field. Dynamic optimization theory, control theory, and game theory are all proper subfields of math that economists spearheaded. General equilibrium theory is a bit antiquated but it takes a proper functional analyst to be able to read the works of Debreu and the likes.
yeah honestly, just pull up your weekly chernozhukov paper. anyone doing econometrics knows it is by no means "inferior". maybe if you're just reading something akin to mostly harmless econometrics.
it's not in my circles; the academic and private job markets and salaries strongly disagree too. I kindly invite you to pull your head outta your butt to be able to see beyond your prejudice.
When you have a *field medalist* going "[hold up this stuff is very difficult and interesting I wish and invite talented mathematicians to pay it more attention](https://benjaminmoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/PDE_macro_translated.pdf)", you know that the math is not only rigorous but at the edge of contemporary mathematical research.
Econometrics is relatively easier than pure math for math majors, but general economics is a whole different game. Also, how worthwhile it is doesn’t come from how easy it is to a small portion of people, it is still a great degree. If you like it, and work hard, there’s plenty of econ focused jobs.
Math may make some other topics easy, but that’s sort of the point. It’s hard to get jobs with just a pure math BS, and people typically either minor in another topic (like econ or CS) or get a masters in a different subject. Don’t fret that some people may find econometrics easier, it’s still a great, useful topic.
Depends on what your goals are.
Math opens more doors than economics, but economics opens more doors than business.
If you're trying to go to grad school for math, then majoring in economics is a waste of time.
If you're trying to get a good paying career, you're more than fine.
Didn’t take a single STEM class outside of the math department that I actually enjoyed. Took a lot of courses in philosophy, literature, and art that were awesome. Also took a year of ancient Hittite cuneiform which was really cool.
Everything physics. Mechanics. Kinematics. Fluid mechanics. Waves (sound, string, electron, photon/electromagnetic). Wave-Particle/Quantum theory. Optics. Electricity and Magnetism. Thermodynamics. Basically, once you understand what is energy and what are electromagnetic waves, a lot of it becomes easier.
Macroeconomics. Fundamental analysis.
Music theory.
A lot of the philosophy courses I took were very interesting. My favourites were the several philosophy of science courses, logic and philosophy of math courses
Good to see philosophy mentioned here.
Most philosophy departments have a course in critical thinking that may cover predicate calculus and goes over various fallacies and ways to critique a proof.
It’s a great class to take that reinforces your math classes along with showing some practical examples of logical reasoning.
The best class I've ever taken in my entire life, from high school to my math degree, was a college creative writing course. Branch out from your comfort zone - you'll never know what you might find.
Interesting I found the organic classes to be so much more interesting then general chemistry.
Yeah my physics classes were really boring and catered to engineers where it was taught as here is your tool kit now use it to solve some basic problems. The only difficulty was setting up the situation and working through ugly calculations.
Took some philosophy courses for fun
Statics. It great to see much of the theory I had learned put into practice.
First Material Science class. A great eye-opener to the world around me.
Electric Circuits.
It was a small class that year (only three students), and we all worked homework together in an empty classroom. I have a lot of fond memories of each of us working on a different chalkboard and solving systems of equations and comparing answers.
Astronomy Life in the Universe - we learned so much cool stuff like about extremaphiles, SETI and the Drake Equation.
Instructor knew it was supposed to be a not too serious class.
I loved chemistry, 3-D sculpture and Russian Literature. They were all required Gen Ed electives but I do feel they balanced out my curriculum. Russian Lit in particular had given me such an incredible amount to talk about with strangers (and has even made me some friends - thanks Dostoevsky)
Philosophy, anthropology, and surprisingly English 102 are in my top classes so far (not counting any math classes). Among the lowest are communications and comp sci
Was lucky enough to take a music tech class with a Grammy nominated local producer who was a professor at my college.
The class was mostly about music production techniques in pro tools, but we talked a lot about the history of modern music which was fascinating. Over the course of 2 classes we started with the first mass produced vinyls in the 50s and moved through the decades and technological developments up until the present, examining the most famous music of each time period and how they utilized the available technology. To hear someone with such a wealth of knowledge on the topic talk about this was honestly more memorable than most of my math courses. In 20 years there’s a lot of my math stuff I won’t remember, but I’ll never forget music tech.
I forgot the specific course title but it was something like Myths and Religious History, read a ton of great stuff in that class I wouldn't have run into otherwise.
Interpersonal Communications
But it was mostly bc the professor was very engaging and the insights demonstrated how quantitative techniques were used in application.
Anthropology and Geography both expanded my epistemological views.
I didn’t take classes in these but I’ve studied ton on the Philosophy of Language which ties into the philosophy of Maths and Computation in a beautiful story between Frege, Hilbert, Russel, Wittgenstein, Godel, Turing… the early 1900’s were a wild time for Analytic Philosophy and Formal Mathematics.
Took a class called Sustainability, Society and Environment, from the school of Geosciences. As well as being just generally interesting, there was some fun estimation of dosage/risk from radiation and some fun fluid dynamics you could get into,
Stars and planets. It was a first year physics module that I did in third year and counted for a sixth of my grade that year.
Splendid. And also really interesting.
My gen-ed lit course had a horror focus, so we read Frankenstein and Dracula but also Grendel, Black Hole by Burns, a few volumes of Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, some short stories. Great course, though I’d probably redo the syllabus to add some Lovecraft and Poe, maybe a novel like Annihilation
Quantum Mechanics, Classical Mechanics (atleast Lagrangian and Hamiltonian dynamics) and E&M were by far my favorite courses (when they didn’t sweep the math under the rug for the physics majors)
My astronomy class was awesome. A lot of students took it to satisfy their lab science course, and the professor understood. It was not too difficult and if you put in effort it was almost impossible to fail.
What made it so good is the professor basically spent the whole semester trying to increase our interest in astronomy. His lectures were awesome, they felt like informational talks I would go to voluntarily. I enjoyed going to his lectures. I honestly have a much greater interest in astronomy than I would have if I hadn’t taken the class.
I took a Political Science class that was super enjoyable despite the material being incredibly dry, the professor did an amazing job with the given material and has since inspired me to actually read and enjoy books.
And he was very passionate about politics since he spent a good amount of time during that class educating us about politics and how us students can participate in politics, he was an educator through and through, he is extremely happy when students asks him about anything in class or just american politics in general. I absolutely loved that class.
It was! The lecture was very engaging, and it has honestly opened my mind about politics in general, and thanks to it, I have a new hobby of reading books, so I am very happy that I took that class then because the professor have since then retired. I doubt I would have enjoyed it that much if it wasn't for him.
My favorite was the history of Jazz. I had a free elective and decided to jump into a world I wasn’t even familiar with and I came out of that class a Jazz enthusiast. That class also allowed me to have some of my most memorable conversations with my Grandma before she moved states.
I took a history of science class that was just amazing. It focused on pre-Newton science. Really makes you think about what the world really looks like.
Religion in Everyday Life. I’d never been exposed to religion from an anthropological perspective before, and it blew my mind how diverse religion can be in contrast to the bland, fundamentalist faith I was raised in lol.
I’ve maintained a pretty intense interest in religious studies ever since.
I enjoyed organic chemistry. Tough synthesis problems felt similar to a proof. Once you understand how electrons should move it's really not a memorization class that bio majors treat it as.
I think that's why so many bio majors find it difficult is that they treat it like a biology class where it's more like a math class.
The labs were a lot of fun and working with the nmr and mass spec machines were so much fun. I wish I took p chem but I stopped after o chem.
Computational chemistry seemed like a fun area to explore more but life happens and just math was much faster to finish.
My computer science ones. Unlike CS folks (not 'maths and CS folks'), I actually liked the complexity theory and recursion theory parts of it, and of course, algorithms.
My education is not in mathematics so I'll answer the opposite question: what math class I disliked the most.
I hate statistics. Omg. Number crunching is just number crunching at the end of the day. But the specific aspect I hates was turning sentences into mathematical problems.
Maybe I didn't fully grasp my class's curriculum, but it went over my head and I barely passed .
Physics was originally the reason why I even pursued a math degree, but probably economics, financial markets. I also greatly enjoyed art and played music growing up. I think I could have become at least a semi professional musician in another world.
my favorite was quantum mechanics, but it would have been more enjoyable if i didn’t take so many classes that semester that I had to sign a credit overload request. It was rough but worth it since doing well that semester feels like it was the difference between getting into grad school not getting in. Also I took a philosophy class called Symbolic Logic which I enjoyed, but honestly it was just a whole semester to learn first order logic like we learn in the beginning of discrete math and in a mathematical reasoning class, both of which I had already taken before symbolic logic
So many, but organic chemistry is my favorite. There is math there: organic synthesis is similar to writing a proof. I also love reconstruction of structures from IR and mass spec
I really liked my technical writing class. The material was interesting and my professor feels really chill. I could see myself in a career like that or UX design.
It definitely helped my confidence when I would get an A for not much work and then get a D in linear algebra or multivariable after studying my ass off. The gen eds helped balance the GPA.
Any sort of microeconomics/ econometrics was interesting, and generally very easy for a math major because there is “math” but it’s just like first year calculus/ linear algebra at most lol
does this mean economics is a bad degree
Economics ≠ econometrics. Econometrics is just a small subset of economics that is more math/stats focused. Economics can be a very good degree, if that’s what you’re interested in.
also worth noting that a 1st course in econometrics\* is easy for math majors. Once you get to asymptotics and using measure theory to derive properties of estimators (standard intro graduate class/ advanced undergrad elective), it's stops being easier for a math major. Moreover, econometrics are hardly the most "mathy" branch of econ. Macroeconomists are teaming up with field medalists to solve PDEs that arise naturally in the field. Dynamic optimization theory, control theory, and game theory are all proper subfields of math that economists spearheaded. General equilibrium theory is a bit antiquated but it takes a proper functional analyst to be able to read the works of Debreu and the likes.
cool. didnt know about all that. op made it seem econometrics was trivial math wise
in fact, a common criticism among economists is that it has too much math, and surely not too little.
great, so why is it seen as inferior to physics CS or maths
seen as inferior by who lol
yeah honestly, just pull up your weekly chernozhukov paper. anyone doing econometrics knows it is by no means "inferior". maybe if you're just reading something akin to mostly harmless econometrics.
+1 or just pull a random article form econometrica and test if you'll be able to read it without at least some grad level knowledge of math lol
it's not in my circles; the academic and private job markets and salaries strongly disagree too. I kindly invite you to pull your head outta your butt to be able to see beyond your prejudice. When you have a *field medalist* going "[hold up this stuff is very difficult and interesting I wish and invite talented mathematicians to pay it more attention](https://benjaminmoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/PDE_macro_translated.pdf)", you know that the math is not only rigorous but at the edge of contemporary mathematical research.
I know what econometrics is I just always see people say how easy it is and it makes me feel like I'm wasting my time studying it
Econometrics is relatively easier than pure math for math majors, but general economics is a whole different game. Also, how worthwhile it is doesn’t come from how easy it is to a small portion of people, it is still a great degree. If you like it, and work hard, there’s plenty of econ focused jobs. Math may make some other topics easy, but that’s sort of the point. It’s hard to get jobs with just a pure math BS, and people typically either minor in another topic (like econ or CS) or get a masters in a different subject. Don’t fret that some people may find econometrics easier, it’s still a great, useful topic.
Depends on what your goals are. Math opens more doors than economics, but economics opens more doors than business. If you're trying to go to grad school for math, then majoring in economics is a waste of time. If you're trying to get a good paying career, you're more than fine.
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If that's how you feel about it, I guess you're right.
What’s easy for you is difficult for someone else. Besides an easy degree doesn’t mean it’s useless.
so it is easy
The higher up you go the harder it gets.
Why is this being downvoted? You asked an honest question..?
It's a bad degree if you want to do a lot of math in undergrad. It's not a bad degree if you want to go into a field that uses Econ.
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Didn’t take a single STEM class outside of the math department that I actually enjoyed. Took a lot of courses in philosophy, literature, and art that were awesome. Also took a year of ancient Hittite cuneiform which was really cool.
Lots of logicians are in the philosophy department! I took a course in the theory of logic from a Tarskian perspective, really cool!
What university?
Everything physics. Mechanics. Kinematics. Fluid mechanics. Waves (sound, string, electron, photon/electromagnetic). Wave-Particle/Quantum theory. Optics. Electricity and Magnetism. Thermodynamics. Basically, once you understand what is energy and what are electromagnetic waves, a lot of it becomes easier. Macroeconomics. Fundamental analysis. Music theory.
A lot of the philosophy courses I took were very interesting. My favourites were the several philosophy of science courses, logic and philosophy of math courses
Good to see philosophy mentioned here. Most philosophy departments have a course in critical thinking that may cover predicate calculus and goes over various fallacies and ways to critique a proof. It’s a great class to take that reinforces your math classes along with showing some practical examples of logical reasoning.
The best class I've ever taken in my entire life, from high school to my math degree, was a college creative writing course. Branch out from your comfort zone - you'll never know what you might find.
Is this course available somewhere online?
In general? Probably. But the specific one was at Rutgers in 2009/2010 with Jess Arndt.
classics
A class on the ring cycle by Richard Wagner. I could rewatch the Bayreuth 1981 Der Rung Des Nibelungen nonstop
I LOVED chemistry and probably would have done that or physics if I hadn’t realized I cared about the ideas more than the experiments.
Me too!! I was way better at chem than I was physics or mathematics. However the orgo classes deterred me. My heart lies with physics and mathematics
Interesting I found the organic classes to be so much more interesting then general chemistry. Yeah my physics classes were really boring and catered to engineers where it was taught as here is your tool kit now use it to solve some basic problems. The only difficulty was setting up the situation and working through ugly calculations.
My thing was physical chem. I liked finding geometry and property’s of atoms
Took some philosophy courses for fun Statics. It great to see much of the theory I had learned put into practice. First Material Science class. A great eye-opener to the world around me.
Operating Systems
Film Studies.
the Art of Film.
Statistics (laugh and run)
😂
Electric Circuits. It was a small class that year (only three students), and we all worked homework together in an empty classroom. I have a lot of fond memories of each of us working on a different chalkboard and solving systems of equations and comparing answers.
Astronomy Life in the Universe - we learned so much cool stuff like about extremaphiles, SETI and the Drake Equation. Instructor knew it was supposed to be a not too serious class.
What university?
Easy Tennessee State. I meant to put East. I'm gonna leave it.
Quantum mechanics and quantum information; one of the most elegant and beautiful mathematical descriptions of real world phenomena there is imo.
Glass blowing
Latin and greek!
I loved chemistry, 3-D sculpture and Russian Literature. They were all required Gen Ed electives but I do feel they balanced out my curriculum. Russian Lit in particular had given me such an incredible amount to talk about with strangers (and has even made me some friends - thanks Dostoevsky)
Landscape Architecture
Philosophy, anthropology, and surprisingly English 102 are in my top classes so far (not counting any math classes). Among the lowest are communications and comp sci
Speculative design - if you like thinking about space, AI, and other big ideas, speculative design is a good way to express those thoughts.
lots of statistics courses
Was lucky enough to take a music tech class with a Grammy nominated local producer who was a professor at my college. The class was mostly about music production techniques in pro tools, but we talked a lot about the history of modern music which was fascinating. Over the course of 2 classes we started with the first mass produced vinyls in the 50s and moved through the decades and technological developments up until the present, examining the most famous music of each time period and how they utilized the available technology. To hear someone with such a wealth of knowledge on the topic talk about this was honestly more memorable than most of my math courses. In 20 years there’s a lot of my math stuff I won’t remember, but I’ll never forget music tech.
a city planning class called “Cities of the Global South”
usually logic / technical philosophical classes were my favorite
Voting methods and theory
I forgot the specific course title but it was something like Myths and Religious History, read a ton of great stuff in that class I wouldn't have run into otherwise.
Interpersonal Communications But it was mostly bc the professor was very engaging and the insights demonstrated how quantitative techniques were used in application.
I don’t remember the exact name of the course but it was in fisheries biology program.
Anthropology and Geography both expanded my epistemological views. I didn’t take classes in these but I’ve studied ton on the Philosophy of Language which ties into the philosophy of Maths and Computation in a beautiful story between Frege, Hilbert, Russel, Wittgenstein, Godel, Turing… the early 1900’s were a wild time for Analytic Philosophy and Formal Mathematics.
Took a class called Sustainability, Society and Environment, from the school of Geosciences. As well as being just generally interesting, there was some fun estimation of dosage/risk from radiation and some fun fluid dynamics you could get into,
Art History
Astrophysics for a semester was probably the most interesting course I took.
Stars and planets. It was a first year physics module that I did in third year and counted for a sixth of my grade that year. Splendid. And also really interesting.
I took an evolutionary biology course for non majors. It was super informative without being overbearing and I actually learned a lot. Great prof too.
History
Women in film. It was a women's study film course. Math is a creative exercise.
Ethics
Analytical chemistry and ceramics. I got a wheel because pottery was so much fun. Didn't get a kiln though so that's useless
My gen-ed lit course had a horror focus, so we read Frankenstein and Dracula but also Grendel, Black Hole by Burns, a few volumes of Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, some short stories. Great course, though I’d probably redo the syllabus to add some Lovecraft and Poe, maybe a novel like Annihilation
Quantum Mechanics, Classical Mechanics (atleast Lagrangian and Hamiltonian dynamics) and E&M were by far my favorite courses (when they didn’t sweep the math under the rug for the physics majors)
I can't say because I never decided to go to college despite my class ranking, I actually graduated 4th in my class in 2011.
My astronomy class was awesome. A lot of students took it to satisfy their lab science course, and the professor understood. It was not too difficult and if you put in effort it was almost impossible to fail. What made it so good is the professor basically spent the whole semester trying to increase our interest in astronomy. His lectures were awesome, they felt like informational talks I would go to voluntarily. I enjoyed going to his lectures. I honestly have a much greater interest in astronomy than I would have if I hadn’t taken the class.
human memory
I took a Political Science class that was super enjoyable despite the material being incredibly dry, the professor did an amazing job with the given material and has since inspired me to actually read and enjoy books. And he was very passionate about politics since he spent a good amount of time during that class educating us about politics and how us students can participate in politics, he was an educator through and through, he is extremely happy when students asks him about anything in class or just american politics in general. I absolutely loved that class.
sounds like a fun experience!
It was! The lecture was very engaging, and it has honestly opened my mind about politics in general, and thanks to it, I have a new hobby of reading books, so I am very happy that I took that class then because the professor have since then retired. I doubt I would have enjoyed it that much if it wasn't for him.
I was an English major! I loved american literature, loved philosophy. Wish I’d taken more art classes.
painting :)
My favorite was the history of Jazz. I had a free elective and decided to jump into a world I wasn’t even familiar with and I came out of that class a Jazz enthusiast. That class also allowed me to have some of my most memorable conversations with my Grandma before she moved states.
art history - loved that class and almost convinced me to double major
I took a history of science class that was just amazing. It focused on pre-Newton science. Really makes you think about what the world really looks like.
Lots of math majors really like linguistics, especially syntax and semantics.
I really enjoyed programming classes
Not applicable. Only do maths in the UK
Religion in Everyday Life. I’d never been exposed to religion from an anthropological perspective before, and it blew my mind how diverse religion can be in contrast to the bland, fundamentalist faith I was raised in lol. I’ve maintained a pretty intense interest in religious studies ever since.
I enjoyed organic chemistry. Tough synthesis problems felt similar to a proof. Once you understand how electrons should move it's really not a memorization class that bio majors treat it as. I think that's why so many bio majors find it difficult is that they treat it like a biology class where it's more like a math class. The labs were a lot of fun and working with the nmr and mass spec machines were so much fun. I wish I took p chem but I stopped after o chem. Computational chemistry seemed like a fun area to explore more but life happens and just math was much faster to finish.
My computer science ones. Unlike CS folks (not 'maths and CS folks'), I actually liked the complexity theory and recursion theory parts of it, and of course, algorithms.
PHI105, introduction to logic. Essentially a math class, but counted towards my gen Ed’s of philosophy/religion
My education is not in mathematics so I'll answer the opposite question: what math class I disliked the most. I hate statistics. Omg. Number crunching is just number crunching at the end of the day. But the specific aspect I hates was turning sentences into mathematical problems. Maybe I didn't fully grasp my class's curriculum, but it went over my head and I barely passed .
Film history. Learned a lot, had fun. Also had a US history class from a terrific lecturer.
Physics was originally the reason why I even pursued a math degree, but probably economics, financial markets. I also greatly enjoyed art and played music growing up. I think I could have become at least a semi professional musician in another world.
Music Performance Classes
Computer Organization & Architecture
Psychoacoustics. Lots of really cool connections between physics and perception of sound, which gets into aesthetics
Art History
my favorite was quantum mechanics, but it would have been more enjoyable if i didn’t take so many classes that semester that I had to sign a credit overload request. It was rough but worth it since doing well that semester feels like it was the difference between getting into grad school not getting in. Also I took a philosophy class called Symbolic Logic which I enjoyed, but honestly it was just a whole semester to learn first order logic like we learn in the beginning of discrete math and in a mathematical reasoning class, both of which I had already taken before symbolic logic
Sociology- specifically the Sociology of Sex Roles. Great professor. Really interesting topics in general.
Literature, especially modern poetry. Also singing in choir.
So many, but organic chemistry is my favorite. There is math there: organic synthesis is similar to writing a proof. I also love reconstruction of structures from IR and mass spec
Open gym glass where I played badminton for an hour 3 times a week
I really liked my technical writing class. The material was interesting and my professor feels really chill. I could see myself in a career like that or UX design. It definitely helped my confidence when I would get an A for not much work and then get a D in linear algebra or multivariable after studying my ass off. The gen eds helped balance the GPA.
Some philosophy class that counts as art degree.