An enlightening essay on economics for people like me

What do I mean by "people like me?" Well, I am someone who understands the importance of economics (in my case, for history) but don't really understand the methodologies. In fact, I'm skeptical. When someone uses the population of Vietnam in 1500 as one datapoint in a world-wide analysis of development outcomes, I wonder where on earth they got their numbers. Also I bailed out of math at an early stage. I don't understand the significance of log and why it helps solve certain kinds of problems.

Noah Smith is an economist who writes interesting things, mostly on contemporary problems, and he has written a long piece on what is the appropriate standard for winning the Nobel Economics Prize is. In doing so he says a lot about the state of the field.

If this interests you, have fun.