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Economics & Finance · Year 1 · Foundations
S1 Economics and quantitative tools
Understand supply, demand and the main economic aggregates, consolidate algebra and functions, and learn to program in Python.
218hours of coursework
22weeks at 10 h
5steps
18new courses
4universities
Target skills
- Supply, demand, elasticities and market equilibrium
- Theory of the firm, externalities and public goods
- GDP, inflation, unemployment and economic policy
- Equations, functions, exponentials and logarithms
- Python: variables, loops, functions, files and data
Semester project
A one-page economic outlook on inflation and unemployment in your country, with charts drawn in Python from public data.
Courses this semester
- 1Rice UniversityBeginner
Stated prerequisites: High school or equivalent education; interest in economics
Show the 3 courses
Course Level Length Rating (reviews) Principles of Economics: Introduction - Getting to Know You Beginner 20 h 4.8 (68) Principles of Economics: Microeconomics - Down to Business Beginner 13 h 4.9 (39) Principles of Economics: Macroeconomics - The Big Picture Beginner 22 h 4.8 (75) - 2University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignBeginner
Stated prerequisites: No prior experience required
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Course Level Length Rating (reviews) Microeconomics Principles Beginner 9 h 4.8 (3,332) Market Equilibrium, Government Policy & Elasticity Beginner 6 h 4.9 (42) The Theory of the Firm Beginner 9 h 4.8 (36) Public Goods, Common Resources, and Externalities Beginner 4 h 4.9 (52) - 3Johns Hopkins UniversityBeginner
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Course Level Length Rating (reviews) Algebra: Elementary to Advanced - Equations & Inequalities Beginner 10 h 4.8 (654) Algebra: Elementary to Advanced - Functions & Applications Beginner 6 h 4.8 (198) Algebra: Elementary to Advanced - Polynomials and Roots Beginner 9 h 4.9 (176) - 4Johns Hopkins UniversityBeginnerR
Stated prerequisites: Some high school algebra and function basics
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Course Level Length Rating (reviews) Precalculus: Relations and Functions Beginner 12 h 4.7 (231) Precalculus: Periodic Functions Beginner 9 h 4.7 (110) Precalculus: Mathematical Modeling Beginner 10 h 4.8 (98) - 5University of MichiganBeginnerPython, SQL, SQLite
Stated prerequisites: No prerequisites; designed as an on-ramp to programming
Show the 5 courses
Course Level Length Rating (reviews) Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) Beginner 17 h 4.8 (233,775) Python Data Structures Beginner 20 h 4.9 (97,365) Using Python to Access Web Data Beginner 19 h 4.8 (44,591) Using Databases with Python Beginner 14 h 4.8 (21,659) Capstone: Retrieving, Processing, and Visualizing Data with Python Beginner 9 h 4.7 (14,483)
Reading
The Economy 2.0The CORE Econ teamA modern introduction to economics, built on data and history.Free online
Principles of Economics 3eOpenStaxThe reference textbook for basic micro- and macroeconomics.Free (OpenStax)
Python for EverybodyCharles R. SeveranceThe Michigan specialization's official textbook.Free, CC BY 4.0
Things to watch
- Principles of Economics (Rice) and Microeconomics Principles (Illinois) overlap in part: take Rice first, then Illinois to go deeper into microeconomics.
- The Johns Hopkins maths courses use R or a spreadsheet for data: Python is enough to redo the exercises.
With Coursera Plus
This semester takes 218 hours, about 5 months at 10 hours a week. A Coursera Plus subscription gives access to most of its courses during that time.