Looking back and looking forward

In the first year, PPE students are all required to study the same papers – Philosophy (which contains Moral Philosophy (based on Utilitarianism by Mill), General Philosophy, and Introduction to Logic), Economics (divided into Introductory Microeconomics and Macroeconomics), and Politics (Theory of Politics, Practice of Politics, and non-examinable Political Analysis).

Even though I got to choose the two main subjects, second year ended up being filled with compulsory core papers, and so I had to take Ethics, Knowledge and Reality (which I got to choose from a couple Philosophy Core Papers), Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Quantitative Economics. Although I somewhat enjoyed all of them, with my favourites being QE, Micro and most of K&R, they weren’t papers I specifically chose to study out of great interest.

This year, however, I will only be taking the papers I specifically chose because I found them exciting and thought I would really enjoy them – Econometrics, which is basically QE on steroids, which I am doing this term, and so far very much enjoying, and Microeconomics Analysis and Philosophical Logic next term, which I hope will end up being as good choices as Econometrics turned out to be.

So, what is Econometrics? It is the study of statistical methods economists (and researchers in other fields) use to analyse data, draw conclusions about what the data means (what the data says about the observed population, and whether these results are significant), and make predictions about how economies are going to behave in the future.

One of the reasons I like Econometrics is its use of mathematical methods, as I used to enjoy maths a lot at school, and the other is the usefulness of what I’m learning. In the age where everyone has access to so much information, it is often difficult to make sense of it and understand the implications of that information. Learning about data analysis could provide me with tools that will make understanding all this information easier. Plus, I have discovered that I prefer when there is somewhat of an answer, which tends to not be the case in Philosophy. In Econometrics, exam questions often have precise answers, which I really like, and even the actual questions econometricians ask can be answered in a more precise way, than you could answer something like ‘What is knowledge?’.

I hope I will keep liking (and understanding) Econometrics and be able to rightfully call this term my best at Oxford yet, and that my other two optional papers were chosen as well as this one. Unfortunately, next term is looking to be by far the busiest that I have had, since I will be taking two papers when most of my coursemates will be taking none, and only a few will be taking one. In addition to that we will have a lot of revision tutorials that will go over the materials from last year to help us prepare for the final exams. In conclusion, I will probably die. But if I end up loving Microeconomic Analysis and Philosophical Logic like I do Econometrics, at least I will die very happy.