Journaling of Chapter 5: Elasticity And Its Applications

     Chapter five is spent talking about the elasticity of demand and the elasticity of supply. Chapter 5 is pretty much just building off what readers were told in the previous chapter. At the end of the chapter, the writer(s) also included applications of supply, demand, and elasticity working together as one. 

     This chapter has so far been the most difficult for me to grasp. I would give it a difficulty rating of 3 out of 3. I only really started to understand when I read the section giving examples of applications. I understand the basic idea of elastic and in-elasticity based on the changes of quantity demanded or supplied versus how much the pricing of the product has changed. However, the equations or formulas really threw me off track. I think my confusion probably stems from the wording of how the authors define these computations. Basically, when they were just discussing the general concepts of each term, I understood. But once the math was thrown in there, it became much harder for me to follow what the passage was trying to convey. 

     However, it is refreshing to have mathematical concepts in social science. I’m intrigued with how economics is tied with math. I hope to understand more equations in economics soon so that I can learn to apply my knowledge to certain scenarios. I think this would be a very useful build and improvement from just understanding the general ideas of each economic term that we are taught.