Editing Utility (section)

===Ordinal===
{{Main|Ordinal utility}}

Instead of giving actual numbers over different bundles, ordinal utilities are only the rankings of utilities received from different bundles of goods or services.<ref name=":0" /> For example, ordinal utility could tell that having two ice creams provide a greater utility to individuals in comparison to one ice cream but could not tell exactly how much extra utility received by the individual. Ordinal utility, it does not require individuals to specify how much extra utility they received from the preferred bundle of goods or services in comparison to other bundles. They are only needed to tell which bundles they prefer. 

When ordinal utilities are used, differences in utils (values assumed by the utility function) are treated as ethically or behaviorally meaningless:  the utility index encodes a full behavioral ordering between members of a choice set, but tells nothing about the related ''strength of preferences''. For the above example, it would only be possible to say that juice is preferred to tea to water. Thus, ordinal utility utilizes comparisons, such as "preferred to", "no more", "less than", etc.

If a function <math>u(x)</math> is ordinal and non-negative, it is equivalent to the function <math>u(x)^2</math>, because taking the square is an increasing [[Monotonic function#Monotonic transformation|monotone (or monotonic) transformation]]. This means that the ordinal preference induced by these functions is the same (although they are two different functions). In contrast, if <math>u(x)</math> is cardinal, it is not equivalent to <math>u(x)^2</math>.