In an economic example, Q might be demand or supply and V might be price or income. In a general sense, the expression to the right would give us the elasticity of Q with respect to V. For now, just think of this expression as one that gives an intuitive feel for what an elasticity is. Specifically, it tells us how responsive Q is to changes in V. We use the capital Greek letter (delta) as a short hand for "change in."

   There are two issues that we need to resolve later: What base do we use in computing these percentages, and how do we deal with the signs (+ or -) of these expressions?

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