Economists use the terms "preferences", "tastes", and "utility"
interchangeably. Graphically we represent tastes with indifference
curves, graphs of sets of points among which a particular consumer
is indifferent. Though consumers typically consume hundreds of
different goods and services, we use simple two good examples
for our graphs (graphs of several hundred dimensions being hard
to draw).
By carefully considering what it means to be "indifferent" between two consumption bundles we will see what an indifference curve will look like for a typical consumer.
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