Write 2 surpising things from this and ask one question, The term rational in economics means acting on the basis of: Complete preferences This means that for any pair of possible outcomes that a person's actions may bring about, A and B, it is the case that the person prefers A to B, or B to A, or is indifferent between the two (A and B are equally preferred). Consistent preferences If an individual with consistent (also called tran- sitive) preferences prefers a bundle of goods A to another bundle B, and bundle B to a third bundle, C, they cannot prefer C to A. A person with complete preferences, which requires only that she can rank all pairs of outcomes, might nonetheless violate the consistency assumption. So she could prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A. All that matters for completeness is that she can rank each pair. But rationality requires both completeness and consistency. In the heading at the start of this section, we put quotation marks around rationality to underline the difference between how economists use the term and how it is generally used, that is, to mean "based on reason