ophelimity

Neetu Chandak of Seneca Falls, N.Y., spelled the economic term "ophelimity" as if she were asking a question, then exclaimed "Yes!" and raised her arms when told she had spelled the word correctly.

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Neetu Chandak of Seneca Falls, N.Y., spelled the economic term "ophelimity" as if she were asking a question, then exclaimed "Yes!" and raised her arms when told she had spelled the word correctly.

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She correctly spelled her first word in the finals, "ophelimity".

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But soon thereafter it was proved that even this stronger axiom does not entail the existence of an ophelimity function.

Dictionary of the History of Ideas

The result is that choice no longer yields indifference lines and hence cannot be represented by an ophelimity index.

Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Unfortunately, even “ophelimity,” the term coined by Vilfredo Pareto to cleanse the terminology of any vernacular overtones, did not prevail.

Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Today the notion of an ordinal utility dominates consumer theory, the central problem of which is how to derive an ophelimity function from directly observable budget data.

Dictionary of the History of Ideas

To this transparent definition, Samuelson added only an equally transparent axiom: If a budget reveals that the basket A is preferred to B, no budget can reveal that B is preferred to A. Samuelson claimed that this axiom alone suffices for deriving by integration the indifference varieties and hence for constructing an ophelimity function.

Dictionary of the History of Ideas