Mises and Maths

Economics Economics Questions
1

Hello,

I’ve just listened to Margit von Mises talking about her husband, in a .mp3 called Mises the Humanitarian here on Mises.org and to my surprise she said something like this:

“he elevated the language of economics to a higher place… he always used classroom discussion language with its demand&supply curves, its mathematical equations, its marginal utility and opportunity cost…”

I know Mises said that maths might be useful in some cases, but his wife appears to mean that they were something fundamental for him, just like marginal utility and opportunity cost were…

What do you think of this?

2

She might mean the law of returns, which does entail quite a few equations.

3

Mises often says that math & graphs can be used for undergraduate students, they help visualize concepts.

4

I’ve not read a lot of Libertarian literature yet, but I am finding the graphs and the (thus far limited) mathematical elements of Man, Economy, and State to be very helpful for this reason.