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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