ANALYSIS OF STUDENT’S ABILITY IN MATH CONCEPTS AS A TOOL FOR STUDYING ECONOMIC THEORY

Mathematics in economics has an important role as a tool for quantitative analysis. By using mathematics, the expressions of theoretical economics in the form of verbal are modelled using symbols and equations. So far, the use of mathematics has been widely used in modelling and analysis of microeconomic theory, macroeconomic theory, econometrics, and so on. Seeing the importance role of mathematics in economics teaching and learning process in Department of Economics Development Studies, ideally, students must have smart in logic and a good analysis in basic mathematical concepts that will be used as the foundation of thinking in the study of economic theories. But, the fact remains that the majority of students is still weak in logic and basic mathematical concepts. Lack of student’s logic and mathematical analysis capabilities today is caused by bad analysis in math concept while studying in senior high school. Many senior high school students who wanted to submit in department of economics development studies still considered that high logic and good analysis in basic mathematics concept is not required as well as the student who wanted to submit in the faculty of exact sciences. This paper analyzes logical skill and mathematical concepts capabilities of the third-year student who is majoring in Department of Economics Development Studies, Faculty of Economics, Jenderal Soedirman University. Data were analyzed from 132 questionnaires were distributed to students of fifth, seventh, and nineth semesters as a respondent. The data analyzed include quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data comprises of the student’s grade of math courses include: Mathematics of Economics I, Mathematics of Economics II, Statistics of Economics I, Statistics of Economics II, Econometrics, and Project Evaluation. Meanwhile, the qualitative data consisted of assessment of students about the difficulties in mastering math concepts in mathematical economics courses. Based on the quantitative and qualitative data analysis using questionnaires analysis, it can be seen that most of the students are still difficult to use logic and mathematical concepts for modelling economic theory. The most difficult mathematical concepts understood by the students include: integral equation, descriptive statistics, differential equation, two and three variable equation, linear equation, matrices and inferential statistics. There is a link between the ability of mathematical concepts while studying in high school students with math concepts ability students today. Besides the lack of guidance in the form of tutorials is still the biggest obstacle for students to understand and use math concepts in the study of economic theories. Keywords: mathematics for economics, mathematical learning process in economics, questionnaires analysis