Its a way of expressing how easy or hard a gear is. Since there are many equivalent gears, for example a 51/17 is exactly the same as a 48/16, its easier to talk about gear inches, which is the number of inches the bike travels with one revolution of the pedals, than it is to talk about specific CR/cog combinations.

In general, a 70 inch gear is a pretty easy around town gear for the flats. The 42/16 gear you started with is about 70 inches. Track racers usually ride something in the 88-92 inch range. Your 48/15 is about 86 inches, so you are getting up there with the track racers.

Easy to calculate, Cr teeth divided by cog teeth times 27 gives you gear inches.