<p>The math involved in accounting as the introductory level is very basic; however, you have to be comfortable with working with numbers. As you move onto higher level accounting courses, the math gets a bit more complicated, but most of it is still somewhat basic. The complexity in accounting comes from dealing with large amounts of numbers, understanding and interpreting them and knowing what to do with them. In many respects, Accounting has much more in common with Law than it does with Finance. It involves a lot of analysis and understanding of an obnoxious amount of rules set by various standard setters. While the answer to a question may be simply to divide A by B, you may spend hours figuring out that A/B is the proper treatment.</p>
<p>Those who pursue accounting working with standard setters or in a teaching capacity tend to deal with extremely advanced math. A lot of the research that accounting professors do tend to involve substantial amounts of economic and financial theory.</p>
<p>Back to the original post, even though the introductory level stuff only requires basic math skills, you really do need to be very comfortable with numbers to study accounting. The numbers become you’re language in accounting–if you’re not comfortable with something as simple as a derivative, you’re probably not going to be able to interpret the large amounts of data contained in a financial statement.</p>