How hard is A level Economics

JP0458B

Is there a lot of maths involved? If so what sort of maths

Cheers guys

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Reply 1

hwf

Original post by Don Joiner

Is there a lot of maths involved? If so what sort of maths

Cheers guys

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I'm currently studying the OCR syllabus for AS, and to be honest, it's not all that difficult. There is hardly any maths, and what there is, is mostly working out percentages from given data. If you're worried about the maths then that really shouldn't stop you from choosing Economics, in fact I swapped AS Maths for AS Economics, so you don't need one to do the other!

Hope that helps :smile:

Reply 2

Krollo

The only maths in AS Economics is percentages and occasionally reading a bar chart. It's frankly year 7 stuff.

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Reply 3

JP0458B

Thanks guys it's just the main economics teacher at my school keeps going on about how if you're bad at maths you will really struggle :/

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Reply 4

Kaneki

Take a look at some past papers and this website here: http://www.petragrade.com/

I currently take OCR AS Economics and can say it isn't the Maths element that makes it challenging, its the fact that most of the content is theories and ideals (having to put your mindset into unrealistic situations).

Very interesting though, but I'd say go for it, just be prepared to put the time into learning all the content :3

Reply 5

dyslexicvegie

A2 Economist here!

Graphs - that is the main extent of the maths. Unit 1 AQA has a few division calculations in it. It's probably to the same extent as GCSE physics or less.
There are a few theories to get ur head around, for which a mathematical mind if useful.
However if you are taking economics with a view to doing it at degree level things get a bit more complicated.

Reply 6

AdamCee

During our options evening, the teacher told us
"Business is 10% maths, economics is 20% maths"

How difficult, I'm not too sure. But I'd imagine it's relatively simple stuff, just basic calculations and graphs

Reply 7

iAmanze

Original post by Don Joiner

Is there a lot of maths involved? If so what sort of maths

Cheers guys

Posted from TSR Mobile

Took OCR Economics, got A* at the end of it.

It is simple to grasp and the maths is really basic but you will have to want to learn about it to do well because there are some concepts that you might not want to learn but may come up in the exam.

Let me explain better.

Under let's say topic X.
There are subtopics: a,b,c,d,e.

Now to remember all the stuff would take wanting to know it, because typically only let's say 'a' may come up. They pick very little from what you have to read.

I personally aspire to become an asset manager/ hedge fund trader thus need to know economics so read the book in my spare time also as I found the concepts very interesting (as well as travelling to some economic talks in Central London).

At the end of the day, A2 will be slightly essay intensive and you need to know what you are talking about because they do not provide you with what the essay is about but rather give a pre-release material and you have to guess what questions they could ask you.

Reply 8

Kaneki

Original post by dyslexicvegie

Very good relation actually, I never thought of relating it to GCSE Physics.

But just to give you an idea of the equations in AS they're things like:

PED: %Change in Demand/%Change in Price
AD: C+I+G+(X-M)

As you can see, pretty basic stuff.