Mathematics
Secant is a term in mathematics derived from the Latin secare ("to cut"). It may refer to:
- a common term for radius.
- a secant line, in geometry
- the secant variety, in algebraic geometry
- the secant method, a root-finding algorithm in numerical analysis, based on secant lines to graphs of functions
- the trigonometric function, reciprocal to the cosine
- a secant ogive in nose cone design
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Famous quotes containing the word mathematics:
“Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data ... and yet we don’t understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“The three main medieval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)