In geometry, the perpendicular distance between two objects is the distance from one to the other, measured along a line that is perpendicular to one or both.
The distance from a point to a line is the distance to the nearest point on that line. That is the point at which a segment from it to the given point is perpendicular to the line.
Likewise, the distance from a point to a curve is measured by a line segment that is perpendicular to a tangent line to the curve at the nearest point on the curve.
The distance from a point to a plane is measured as the length from the point along a segment that is perpendicular to the plane, meaning that it is perpendicular to all lines in the plane that pass through the nearest point in the plane to the given point.
Other instances include:
Perpendicular regression fits a line to data points by minimizing the sum of squared perpendicular distances from the data points to the line. Other geometric curve fitting methods using perpendicular distance to measure the quality of a fit exist, as in total least squares.
The concept of perpendicular distance may be generalized to
In classical mathematics, analytic geometry, also known as coordinate geometry or Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using a coordinate system. This contrasts with synthetic geometry.
A Cartesian coordinate system in a plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point uniquely by a pair of numerical coordinates, which are the signed distances to the point from two fixed perpendicular oriented lines, measured in the same unit of length. Each reference coordinate line is called a coordinate axis or just axis of the system, and the point where they meet is its origin, at ordered pair (0, 0). The coordinates can also be defined as the positions of the perpendicular projections of the point onto the two axes, expressed as signed distances from the origin.
Euclidean space is the fundamental space of geometry, intended to represent physical space. Originally, that is, in Euclid's Elements, it was the three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry, but in modern mathematics there are Euclidean spaces of any positive integer dimension, including the three-dimensional space and the Euclidean plane. The qualifier "Euclidean" is used to distinguish Euclidean spaces from other spaces that were later considered in physics and modern mathematics.
A sphere is a geometrical object that is a three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. A sphere is the set of points that are all at the same distance r from a given point in three-dimensional space. That given point is the centre of the sphere, and r is the sphere's radius. The earliest known mentions of spheres appear in the work of the ancient Greek mathematicians.
In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle. The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the perpendicular symbol, ⟂. It can be defined between two lines, between a line and a plane, and between two planes.
In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The order of the coordinates is significant, and they are sometimes identified by their position in an ordered tuple and sometimes by a letter, as in "the x-coordinate". The coordinates are taken to be real numbers in elementary mathematics, but may be complex numbers or elements of a more abstract system such as a commutative ring. The use of a coordinate system allows problems in geometry to be translated into problems about numbers and vice versa; this is the basis of analytic geometry.
Computational geometry is a branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms which can be stated in terms of geometry. Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric algorithms, and such problems are also considered to be part of computational geometry. While modern computational geometry is a recent development, it is one of the oldest fields of computing with a history stretching back to antiquity.
Elliptic geometry is an example of a geometry in which Euclid's parallel postulate does not hold. Instead, as in spherical geometry, there are no parallel lines since any two lines must intersect. However, unlike in spherical geometry, two lines are usually assumed to intersect at a single point. Because of this, the elliptic geometry described in this article is sometimes referred to as single elliptic geometry whereas spherical geometry is sometimes referred to as double elliptic geometry.
In mathematics, hyperbolic geometry is a non-Euclidean geometry. The parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry is replaced with:
In geometry, inversive geometry is the study of inversion, a transformation of the Euclidean plane that maps circles or lines to other circles or lines and that preserves the angles between crossing curves. Many difficult problems in geometry become much more tractable when an inversion is applied.
In non-Euclidean geometry, the Poincaré half-plane model is the upper half-plane, denoted below as H, together with a metric, the Poincaré metric, that makes it a model of two-dimensional hyperbolic geometry.
Descriptive geometry is the branch of geometry which allows the representation of three-dimensional objects in two dimensions by using a specific set of procedures. The resulting techniques are important for engineering, architecture, design and in art. The theoretical basis for descriptive geometry is provided by planar geometric projections. The earliest known publication on the technique was "Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt", published in Linien, Nuremberg: 1525, by Albrecht Dürer. Italian architect Guarino Guarini was also a pioneer of projective and descriptive geometry, as is clear from his Placita Philosophica (1665), Euclides Adauctus (1671) and Architettura Civile, anticipating the work of Gaspard Monge (1746–1818), who is usually credited with the invention of descriptive geometry. Gaspard Monge is usually considered the "father of descriptive geometry" due to his developments in geometric problem solving. His first discoveries were in 1765 while he was working as a draftsman for military fortifications, although his findings were published later on.
A vanishing point is a point on the image plane of a perspective drawing where the two-dimensional perspective projections of mutually parallel lines in three-dimensional space appear to converge. When the set of parallel lines is perpendicular to a picture plane, the construction is known as one-point perspective, and their vanishing point corresponds to the oculus, or "eye point", from which the image should be viewed for correct perspective geometry. Traditional linear drawings use objects with one to three sets of parallels, defining one to three vanishing points.
In geometry, a line is an infinitely long object with no width, depth, or curvature. Thus, lines are one-dimensional objects, though they may exist in two, three, or higher dimension spaces. The word line may also refer to a line segment in everyday life, which have two points to denote its ends. Lines can be referred by two points that lay on it or by a single letter.
In geometry and science, a cross section is the non-empty intersection of a solid body in three-dimensional space with a plane, or the analog in higher-dimensional spaces. Cutting an object into slices creates many parallel cross-sections. The boundary of a cross-section in three-dimensional space that is parallel to two of the axes, that is, parallel to the plane determined by these axes, is sometimes referred to as a contour line; for example, if a plane cuts through mountains of a raised-relief map parallel to the ground, the result is a contour line in two-dimensional space showing points on the surface of the mountains of equal elevation.
A point is said to be equidistant from a set of objects if the distances between that point and each object in the set are equal.
Three-dimensional space is a geometric setting in which three values are required to determine the position of an element. This is the informal meaning of the term dimension.
In hyperbolic geometry, a hypercycle, hypercircle or equidistant curve is a curve whose points have the same orthogonal distance from a given straight line.
The terminology of algebraic geometry changed drastically during the twentieth century, with the introduction of the general methods, initiated by David Hilbert and the Italian school of algebraic geometry in the beginning of the century, and later formalized by André Weil, Jean-Pierre Serre and Alexander Grothendieck. Much of the classical terminology, mainly based on case study, was simply abandoned, with the result that books and papers written before this time can be hard to read. This article lists some of this classical terminology, and describes some of the changes in conventions.
Geometrical Product Specification and Verification (GPS&V). standards is a set of ISO standards developed by ISO Technical Committee 213. The aim of those standards is to develop a common language to specify macrogeometry and microgeometry of products or part of products so that it can be used consistently all over the world.