Hey Economists, Plz Help!

[PhD-Seeker]

Hello everyone..

I will start my master in Economics soon, may case is that I don't have a very strong economical background.

I need your help to find a book or a source for Interpreting Economic signs & symbols. i.e.: (Rfm, beta, alpha,... etc.)

Thanks a lot in advance..

[TruDog]

I have no idea what you mean by Rfm or Plz. Beta and alpha mean different things, based on your topic. It sounds like you would benefit from books like Mankiw's intermediate macro text and Varian's intermediate micro text.

Alternatively, you could ask the professors in your master's program what they recommend.

[Karina 07]

This is the frustrating part about econ. They frequently swap what things stand for and aren't always clear on what something does stand for! (E.g. using alpha in 3 different ways on the same page and then using it again without telling you which way they're using it -- sure, you can figure it out, but that takes more time and it could have been avoided with better writing.) I have some accounting friends who say that there it is always absolutely clear what you're referring to. One time, I even saw something really poorly planned in which alpha ended up standing for two different things in the same equation, except that we knew the value of one of them, so... but still, poor, poor planning.

You're just going to have to suffer through it, I guess. Eventually you develop a knack for switching between variables, I think, but it was the most confusing part of econ for me at the beginning. The only ones that are pretty standard to learn are the basic macro ones: Y, C, I, pi, etc.

[EnLaPlaya]

I have no idea what you mean by Rfm or Plz. Beta and alpha mean different things, based on your topic. It sounds like you would benefit from books like Mankiw's intermediate macro text and Varian's intermediate micro text.

Given what RFM - among other explanations - mean (RFM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), he might want to dwell into some marketing book as well. As to Plz case, I would suggest checking out Urban Dictionary: plz.

[economicus]

Well, I wouldn't worry too much about symbols. Different papers often use different symbols...If you don't have a strong background in economics I would propose you'd better spend some time reading some intermediate economics books that were already mentioned above. You will learn symbols during your grad programme...more important is to build economic intuition.

[GymShorts]

Since most symbols aren't universal, if you aren't comfortable with the use of symbols in economics, just choose 4 or 5 symbol-heavy models and become familiar with all of the symbols in those models. After that, you should get an idea of how symbols are used in different models and the use of symbols in models in general.

I would also suggest not just learning models in one field, because sometimes a symbol might be universal in a specific field, but mean something else in another field. So perhaps check out a growth model, a risk model, a financial economics model, and so on.

[TruDog]

As to Plz case, I would suggest checking out Urban Dictionary: plz.

Thanks for the heads up. As a native speaker of English, I must be out of touch with the 'new' times. See what studying for prelims does to you?