Armed with the assumptions of completeness, transitivity, and non-satiation, we ask whether there might be a way for a given consumer to represent his own preferences in a consistent manner. Let us consider presenting him with all possible bundles of all the possible goods and services he could consider. Now suppose we give him paper and pencil and ask him to assign a number to each of the bundles. (The assumption of completeness ensures that he, in fact, could do that.) All he must do is write a number on a paper and lay it on each of the bundles. The only restrictions are these: Comparing any two bundles, if he prefers one to the other, he must assign a higher number to the bundle he prefers. And if he is indifferent between them, he must assign the same number to both. Other than that, he is free to begin with any number he wants for the first bundle he considers. In this way, he is simply ordering the bundles according to his preferences over them.