Discrete Goods
In some cases it is impractical to represent the relationship between price and demand with a continuous curve because of small quantities demanded. Goods and services measured in small units are best represented with a smooth curve. Examples include food measured in calories and leisure measured in minutes. However, when the price of a good is very high in proportion to a consumer's budget there is a need to incorporate this limitation in both the mathematical analysis and the graph representing the relationship. While cars and houses are discrete goods for most people, cheaper goods such as glasses and bicycles are discrete goods only for the very poor. On the national level, nuclear power plants or space stations may be considered discrete goods. The concept is more useful at the individual consumer's level than at the consumers' aggregate level, because for example the difference between 3,000,000 cars demanded and 3,000,001 cars demanded is so little that the market demand for cars can be viewed as essentially continuous.
Read more about this topic: Demand
Famous quotes containing the words discrete and/or goods:
“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“A person far from home is not valued highly, but goods imported from afar are.”
—Chinese proverb.