Weiduo Zhu

What’ve you enjoyed most about your area of study? Was there a particular discovery, new skill or way of thinking, or insight that you found especially valuable? Please share an example from your favorite class or experience.

My favorite economics classes at MIT are 14.12 Game Theory and 14.39 Decision Making & Inference. Game Theory taught me how to think about games and stochastic processes quantitatively and come up with a strategy based on mathematical analysis, while Decision Making & Inference taught me how to test a hypothesis: how to draw conclusions on real-world problems from data.

How does the knowledge from this field, or your interest in it, combine with your other major or minor studies at MIT?

Many economics classes at MIT are closely related to mathematics and algorithms. For example, game theory is related with probability, inference and econometrics are related with statistics, market design and networks are related with algorithms. We use mathematics and algorithms as tools to study economic problems. My interest in economics has also guided my mathematics study at MIT.

An MIT education includes study in the scientific, technical, social science, arts, and humanities fields. How do you think that wide range of knowledge and perspectives will be valuable to you – for your career success and for your enjoyment of life?

From a career perspective, it’s always good to have a broader view of the problem I am trying to solve. With a social science background from my economics major and quantitative skills from my math and computer science majors, I can look at a problem from several different perspectives and use both my quantitative skills and economic intuition to solve the problem. For enjoyment of life, it’s fun to be able to see everyday problems in a quantitative way!

What are your plans for the future?

I will pursue a MEng in Computer Science, Economics, and Data Science at MIT. I hope to do research in either industry or through a PhD after graduating from the MEng program.