Consumers are assumed consistent in their choices between goods (or bundles of goods) in the sense that if A is chosen over B in one time period, B would not later be chosen over A. To ensure this is the case we assume all factors affecting demand remain unal- tered, or ceteris paribus.
Consistency also implies transitivity. For example, if A is preferred to B, and B is pre- ferred to C, then A must be preferred to C. Transitivity can be represented symbolically as:
if A > B and B > C then A > C