Everything about Utility
Concept in economics and decision theory
In economics, utility is a measure of a certain person's satisfaction from a certain state of the world. Over time, the term has been used with at least two meanings.In a normative context, utility refers to a goal or objective that we wish to maximize, i.e., an objective function. This kind of utility bears a closer resemblance to the original utilitarian concept, developed by moral philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In a descriptive context, the term refers to an apparent objective function; such a function is revealed by a person's behavior, and specifically by their preferences over lotteries, which can be any quantified choice. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: UtilityA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: Evidence for the utility of quantum computing before fault toleranceInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: Learning PerlThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: Validation and Utility of a Self-report Version of PRIME-MD<SUBTITLE>The PHQ Primary Care Study</SUBTITLE>Cited 8,434 times
- Go sideways: Preference (economics)A closely related topic
- Go sideways: Indifference curveA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
Noun The state or condition of being useful; usefulness.
Noun Something that is useful.
Noun The ability of a commodity to satisfy needs or wants; the satisfaction experienced by the consumer of that commodity.
Noun Well-being, satisfaction, pleasure, or happiness.
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
Validation and Utility of a Self-report Version of PRIME-MD<SUBTITLE>The PHQ Primary Care Study</SUBTITLE>
Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework
Evolution, Weighting, and Phylogenetic Utility of Mitochondrial Gene Sequences and a Compilation of Conserved Polymerase Chain Reaction Primers
Cloud computing and emerging IT platforms: Vision, hype, and reality for delivering computing as the 5th utility
Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior
Utility of a New Procedure for Diagnosing Mental Disorders in Primary Care
The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings.
ChatGPT Utility in Healthcare Education, Research, and Practice: Systematic Review on the Promising Perspectives and Valid Concerns
🆕 Influential since 2022
Evidence for the utility of quantum computing before fault tolerance
Utility of ChatGPT in Clinical Practice
Opportunities and challenges in the diagnostic utility of dermal interstitial fluid
Assessing the Utility of ChatGPT Throughout the Entire Clinical Workflow: Development and Usability Study
Real-world application of tumor mutational burden-high (TMB-high) and microsatellite instability (MSI) confirms their utility as immunotherapy biomarkers
📚 Books worth reading
Learning PerlRandal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix · 1993
UNIX Power ToolsJerry Peek, Tim O'Reilly · 1993- 📕The pigeonWendell Mitchell Levi · 1941
A history of marginal utility theoryEmil Kauder · 1965
VanillaTim Ecott · 2004
Plants of the godsRichard Evans Schultes · 1979
How Buildings LearnStewart Brand · 1994
Country Diary HerbalSarah Hollis · 1990
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
- Preference (economics) In economics, and in other social sciences, preference refers to an order by which an agent, while in search of an "optimal choice", ranks alternatives…
- Indifference curve In economics, an indifference curve connects points on a graph representing different quantities of two goods, points between which a consumer is indifferent…
- Ordinal utility In economics, an ordinal utility function is a function representing the preferences of an agent on an ordinal scale. Ordinal utility theory claims that…
- Consumer choice The theory of consumer choice is the branch of microeconomics that relates preferences to consumption expenditures and to consumer demand curves. It analyzes…
- Revealed preference Revealed preference theory, pioneered by economist Paul Anthony Samuelson in 1938, is a method of analyzing choices made by individuals, mostly used for…
- Multi-attribute utility In decision theory, a multi-attribute utility function is used to represent the preferences of an agent over bundles of goods either under conditions of…
- Marshallian demand function In microeconomics, a consumer's Marshallian demand function (named after Alfred Marshall) is the quantity they demand of a particular good as a function…
- Debreu's representation theorems In economics, the Debreu's theorems are preference representation theorems—statements about the representation of a preference ordering by a real-valued…