This is somewhat of a different article for me, because I haven’t ever thought about writing about topics like this. However, if you read my articles you know that I tend to write about my life and the things that are currently going on around me. Right now, that just so happens to be a little bit of the world of math.

So this semester, I’m taking principles of macroeconomics for my QL requirement at college, and much like sociology, I discovered a new interest in this class. I’ve never been great a math; therefore, I’ve never enjoyed it that much. Going into this class, I didn’t have the best attitude. I thought I was basically going to be confused the whole time. But we’re two weeks in and I have yet to be confused or even bored for that matter. I can honestly say that it’s one of the classes I look forward to the most.

Here’s why I find macroeconomics so fascinating: it’s what’s going on with our economy, which is something we need to be aware of in general. It may sound really boring and most of us may not be worrying about the economy until we get out of school and actually have a steady job someday, but macroeconomics is a method of understanding how the economy is doing, which I’m afraid a lot of us are clueless about.

What I’ve learned so far in this class is about the GDP, or the Gross Domestic Product which measures the retail dollar value of production within the nation’s borders. It’s how we test how the economy is performing. This number is actually fairly simple to come up with, you just take the production of each item and multiply it by the price it’s sold at. So if this number is high then that’s good, it means we’re producing and selling a lot as a country.

Another interesting calculation we’ve gone over is the CPI, the consumer price index. This number represents the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a basket of consumer goods and services. Using the CPI, we can make calculations that tell us the price of things in the modern day compared to those years ago. Using this information, we can tell if we’re receiving fair prices, or if we’re being ripped off.

There are a few other statistics that I’ve learned in just ten days, but already my knowledge on such an important topic has expanded. I know how the unemployment rate is calculated and what groups of people are counted in the labor force. All of this is important information.

Macroeconomics might sound tricky and uninteresting, but I urge everyone who hasn’t taken a course in this to do so. It’s important to understand where the economy stands and if we as consumers should be outraged by certain price points. Don’t be afraid to take on something you think might be complicated, try it!