Editing Cardinal utility (section)

==Controversies==
Some authors have commented on the misleading nature of the terms "cardinal utility" and "ordinal utility", as used in economic jargon:

{{quote |text=These terms, which seem to have been introduced by Hicks and Allen (1934), bear scant if any relation to the mathematicians' concept of ordinal and cardinal numbers; rather they are euphemisms for the concepts of order-homomorphism to the real numbers and group-homomorphism to the real numbers. |author=John Chipman |source=The foundations of utility<ref name="Chipman, John 1960"/>}}

There remain economists who believe that utility, if it cannot be measured, at least can be approximated somewhat to provide some form of measurement, similar to how prices, which have no uniform unit to provide an actual price level, could still be indexed to provide an "inflation rate" (which is actually a level of change in the prices of weighted indexed products). These measures are not perfect but can act as a proxy for the utility. Lancaster's<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lancaster |first1=Kelvin |date=April 1966 |title=A New Approach to Consumer Theory |journal=Journal of Political Economy |volume=74 |issue=2 |pages=132–157 |doi=10.1086/259131 |jstor=1828835|s2cid=222425622 |url=http://www.dklevine.com/archive/refs41385.pdf }}</ref> characteristics approach to consumer demand illustrates this point.