- Talk about specific passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad. What was memorable?
"Indeed, mathematics can offer a simple, even elegant way of representing the world- not unlike telling someone that it is seventy-two degrees outside rather than having to describe how warm or cool it feels. But at bottom, the most important ideas in economics are intuitive. They derive their power from bringing logic and rigor to bear on everyday problems." (Wheelan xx)
First things first, I appreciate Charles Wheelan's writing style and how it runs parallel to my learning style. He uses analogies and other examples to throw you into his economic mindset. I am fascinated by his ability to make something as significant as economics into one big conversational discussion. The quote that I found interesting also summed up my major observations in this chapter. Starting with his temperature example, I really felt I could understand his point much better when it is put into context. Second, I enjoyed that he supports economics as an intuitive subject rather than math... there is no obvious or correct answer and sometimes it's best to just process all aspects of an economic decision. All in all, this introduction caused me to think about economics in every part of my life as well as taught me that economics is not graphs, charts, and equations, but rather intellectual and intelligent ideas.
One quote that really stood out to me in the introduction was, "First, many intellectually curious people are missing a subject that is provocative, powerful, and highly relevant to almost every aspect of our lives. This may be a weird quote to like but what i like about it is that this states that economics is something relevant to our lives. Along with that it says that its something a lot of people are missing out on and it makes me excited to not be apart of the many people who are missing out. It makes me excited for economics this semester.
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