The Principle Of Production Possibilities Frontier

Economics is basically the weighing of trade-offs when making a decision as we have scarce resources and we cannot do everything so we try to allocate the scarce resources in the most efficient way possible. A couple of economic decision-making principles I find important for the issue of weighing of trade-offs is the principle of the production possibilities frontier, opportunity cost and scarcity. In economics most principles are intertwined so even if they are similar concepts it is important to use the key concepts needed while making a decision as its implies subtle differences. The three electives courses I am thinking about picking are painting, contemporary history and mandarin. Each concept will pick a course that follows its guiding principle of efficiently as each concept has a subtle difference in the meaning of efficiently.

The principle of production possibilities frontier is useful in making you think about possible combinations of output given your scarce resources which shown in a chart to help you analyze the options you have available. To explain how I can use this concept in helping me to pick mine course, two metrics I can use to evaluate the courses are by the grade I will get in the course if I use the time for studying, and the other one is total pay I can get for the semester by using study time allocated to the course in a part-time job. As we are using an economic model it is built with assumptions like I will allocate 10 hours a week to the course. For the three courses the total pay for the semester I will get if I use the 10 hours to work a part-time job is 1,600 and the grades I will get for each if I spend 10 hours studying are a 4.0 in contemporary history, 3.7 in mandarin and 3.3 in painting. If I...

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... is contemporary history. As we are thinking about the problem for the college setting and main goal for a student is to gain knowledge about many disciplines but there is no quantifiable way to measure it except for grades which is the key metric students highlight and it is rational that they will pick a course that should give them the best grade. It is possible that picking painting or mandarin will be an inefficient or illogical decision but is common place as the one could value other elements of his life than the concept of efficiency. There are many metrics you can use to make the decision which can cause people to make different choices on the premise. If I am making the decision the logical answer is contemporary history as it follows key principle of economics which one should try to pick the most efficient option given the limited nature of our resources.