My interest in economics was sparked by Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the basis for the field of classical economics. Enamored by the way the book seemed to perfectly explain the world around me, I learned more about economics through books about subfields like behavioral economics and financial crises. However, when I tried to tackle an academic economic paper, the roadblock of complex mathematics prevented me from going much further than the abstract. At the time, I wasn’t aware that the rising usage of mathematics in the field was extremely controversial.
    I would enjoy a tutorial in econometrics with Adam Smith, an economist-philosopher whose argumentation was based primarily on observation and reason, and I would contrast his perspective with the mathematical and statistical methods I would be taught in the course. By taking elements from formal mathematical proof, economists often construct pseudo-arguments which aren’t very rigorous and leverage priors which aren’t universally agreed upon, in stark contrast to their mathematical peers. Furthermore, it seems as if Zizek’s mindset has permeated the discipline, and many economists advertise their affiliation to beautiful theories while ignoring contradictory data. In the class, I would advocate for a more rigorous form of empirical analysis where data which disagreed with a hypothesis wouldn’t be thrown out, and newer statistical methods to analyze large swaths of data like machine learning would be encouraged. I imagine Smith writing multi-chapter tomes for the weekly assignments replete with elegant arguments, but without the mathematical quality currently in vogue. He would argue using broad historical trends as opposed to statistical minutiae, and would take advantage of alternative rhetorical means (not strictly numerically based warrants).
    Although I would probably disagree with Smith in the direction the field needs to take, we would probably both agree that change is necessary.