If we graph our consumer's marginal utility or marginal willingness to pay for different quantities of pizza in a semester, we can see to the right that we have also graphed her demand curve. In other words, the marginal utility curve is the demand curve.

    Since the marginal willingness to pay and demand curve are the same we can use the area under demand curve to give us a measure of total utility. In more advanced courses you'll study some of the complications involved in measuring utility but for our purposes it's quite reasonable to measure utility in dollar amounts or willingness to pay.

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