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Comment by roel_v | Hacker News Reader

"PhD programs tend to require a hidden curriculum of classes in subjects such as mathematics that are not technically required for economics majors."

"subjects such as mathematics that are not technically required for economics majors"

Eh?

Who lets clueless writers like this near a keyboard?

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There is a rampant war against math. I don't know when it started, but it did. But what people ignore is that math is mandatory in hard science. So people thought that math was the obstacle put in their path just to block them. They asked to get rid of the obstacle, but they failed to understand that it was not there to block their path, it was mandatory.

Reality always win.

Real Analysis, Linear Algebra and Calc I-III are not required to get an Economics degree but they will help enormously if you want to go to MIT(number one programme), Harvard (two) or even someplace like Penn(somewhere in the top 20). You do not need to get a Math minor to get an Economics major.

"You do not need to get a Math minor to get an Economics major."

That wasn't the claim. The claim was that it's somehow surprising that economics is math heavy. Yes there are 'policy' or 'international business' degrees camouflaging as 'economics' degrees, but how can it be a surprise to any but the most uninformed that 'economics' (at least the prestigious degrees, which are the ones that will produce the majority of future academics) are math heavy? And I'm not even talking about just the pure math courses. Courses like Operations Research are notorious 'filter courses' for economics students, good luck passing those without math fundamentals.

Economics is very unusual in that even doing extremely well in the undergraduate major is not going to prepare you all that well for graduate study. Knowing things like that is part of the hidden curriculum the article is talking about. See also doing undergraduate research assistantships in other disciplines. The author may not have been as clear as they could have been.

Why would Calc I-II not be required to get an Econ degree? Derivatives are used all over basic microeconomics. Anytime you see the word "marginal" you're taking a derivative.

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