I took Caltech/Coursera class "Principles of Economics for Scientists" this winter. I was struck by how lean and clear the concepts are once you bother to write them down mathematically. Much better than the hand-wavy explanations I had heard before.
I also took it a step further, and wrote them down as code. When you can explain something to a computer you know you have understood it; and you may even end up with something that other people can understand and play with. I believe something along the lines of what I ended up with (https://github.com/juanre/econopy) might be profitably used to teach economics to CS-type students.
As far as economics math not representing reality: I think it's obvious enough that humans don't behave the way these equations assume. However, they are a great framework from which to think about how humans actually behave.
I also took it a step further, and wrote them down as code. When you can explain something to a computer you know you have understood it; and you may even end up with something that other people can understand and play with. I believe something along the lines of what I ended up with (https://github.com/juanre/econopy) might be profitably used to teach economics to CS-type students.
As far as economics math not representing reality: I think it's obvious enough that humans don't behave the way these equations assume. However, they are a great framework from which to think about how humans actually behave.